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"The story of Eve and the serpent, and of Noah and his ark, drops to a level with the Arabian Tales, without the merit of being entertaining, and the account of men living to eight and nine hundred years becomes as fabulous as the immortality of the giants of the Mythology."
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Exlpore more Literature quotes
"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."
"Not that length and weight alone indicate excellence, many epic tales are pretty much epic crap."
"Tolkien did admit that, 'As a guide, I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving.' In other words ~ he wrote about what interested him ~ and despite his protestation of including anything allegorical into his tale, Catholic history and mystic prophecy obviously received its fair share of attention ..."
"I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most."
"I wasn't discriminating in my reading, and I'm still not. I read then primarily to be entertained, as I do now. And I'm not saying that apologetically: I feel that if you remove the initial gut response from reading - the delight or excitement or simply the enjoyment of being told a story - and try to concentrate on the meaning or the shape of the "message" first, you might as well give up, it's too much like all work and no play."
"In describing a fairy story which they think adults might possibly read for their own entertainment, reviewers frequently indulge in such waggeries as: 'this book is for children from the ages of six to sixty'. But I have never yet seen the puff of a new motor-model that begun thus: 'this toy will amuse infants from seventeen to seventy'; though that to my mind would be much more appropriate."
"I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves."
"The story of the book filled the car with exciting adventures of the sort that are fun to read about, so we didn't have to think about the exciting adventures of the sort that are no fun to live through."
"The reader is probably wondering that if Tolkien did indeed fashion two of his heroic characters from Catholic prophecies, what about the evil protagonists? Were any of them inspired by these little-known revelations concerning future times? The answer is yes, but to discover the links between the myth and the prophecies, we must venture not only into the realm of unnerving revelations, but also into the murky world of secret sects, dark plots, occult signs, bloody revolutions and conspiracy theories ~ we must probe deep into the burning Eye of Sauron."
"Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Paine
"We can only reason from what is; we can reason on actualities, but not on possibilities."
"He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum."
"Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness. Society promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, government negatively by restraining our vices. Society encourages intercourse. Government creates distinctions."
"But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing."
"There exists in man a mass of sense lying in a dormant state, and which, unless something excites it to action, will descend with him, in that condition,to the grave."
"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice."
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