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"Among the letters my readers write me, there is a certain category which is continuously growing, and which I see as a symptom of the increasing intellectualization of the relationship between readers and literature."
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Exlpore more Literature quotes
"Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that."
"June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved. To dance, to ride, she had adored all that."
"As far as now I can tell that most Stephen King fans don't know him well. They have read or viewed few works and their judge is based on them... that's now well knowing a writer!"
"Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature."
"Of all public figures and benefactors of mankind, no one is loved by history more than the literary patron. Napoleon was just a general of forgotten battles compared with the queen who paid for Shakespeare's meals and beer in the tavern. The statesman who in his time freed the slaves, even he has a few enemies in posterity, whereas the literary patron has none. We thank Gaius Maecenas for the nobility of soul we attribute to Virgil; but he isn't blamed for the selfishness and egocentricity that the poet possessed. The patron creates 'literature through altruism,' something not even the greatest genius can do with a pen."
"Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack."
"Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. Though I've never led an army, I am a wanderer. I cradle 'The Odyssey' nights while the moon is waning, as if it were the sweet body of a woman."
"Gently the waves would break (Lily heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked, Mr. Carmichael thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look years ago."
"I read it a lot, whenever I find it in a library. Partly because I find new things every time I read it, but also because these BOOKS are always there for me. All of them are there for me. My life changes all the time, but books don't change. My reading of them changes-I can bring new things to them each time. But the words are familiar words. The world is a place you've been before, and it welcomes you back."
"This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back again."
Explore more quotes by Herman Hesse
"When trying to remember my share in the glow of the eternal present, in the smile of God, I return to my childhood, too, for that is where the most significant discoveries turn up."
"I was out of my bed in one second, trembling with excitement, and I dashed to the door and into the adjoining room, where I could watch the streets below from the windows."
"The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it."
"The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion."
"It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school."
"In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there."
"It was as if all of the happiness, all of the magic of this blissful hour had flowed together into these stirring, bittersweet tones and flowed away, becoming temporal and transitory once more."
"Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal."
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