Quotes About The Purpose Of Literature

#1. It is not the purpose of literature to purvey news. For news consult the Almanac de Gotha.

Herman Melville

#2. I call that creativity," Orville said. "The purpose of literature is to teach you how to THINK, not how to be practical. Learning to discover the connective tissue between seemingly unrelated events is the only way we are equipped to understand patterns in the real world.

Catherine Lowell

#3. If the purpose of literature is to illuminate human nature, the purpose of fantastic literature is to do that from a wider perspective. You can say different things about what it means to be human if you can contrast that to what it means to be a robot, or an alien, or an elf.

Jo Walton

#4. In an age of global standardization, regional voices also remind both writer and reader that no life is lived generically. If the purpose of literature is truly, as the ancients insisted, to instruct and delight, then what better to understand and enjoy than the here and the now ?

Dana Gioia

#5. The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.

T. S. Eliot

#6. My one aim and concentrated purpose shall be and is to show that women can learn, can reason, can compete with men in the grand fields of literature and science ...

M. Carey Thomas

#7. Sometimes when you meet someone, there's a click. I don't believe in love at first sight but I believe in that click. Recognition.

Ann Aguirre

#8. Literature is literature. Its purpose is to challenge and disorient us, to break us down a little bit so that we are forced to rebuild ourselves. Over time, over the course of many books, we construct a deeper, truer self.

Mark Slouka

#9. About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

Samuel Johnson

#10. Literature always anticipates life. It doesn't copy it but moulds it to it's purpose.

Oscar Wilde

#11. The truth hurt more than lies.

Melissa Landers

#12. Why should Cornishmen learn Cornish? There is no money in it, it serves no practical purpose, and the literature is scanty and of no great originality or value. The question is a fair one, the answer is simple. Because they are Cornish.

Henry Jenner

#13. I was surprised when I finally moved to Boston and the East Coast, to discover that there weren't that many vibraphone players around. And I was the only one playing with four mallets.

Gary Burton

#14. It is not a single cowardice that drives us into fiction's fantasies. We often fear that literature is a game we can't afford to play - the product of idleness and immoral ease. In the grip of that feeling it isn't life we pursue, but the point and purpose of life - its facility, its use.

William H Gass

#15. If you want to know if someone is lying to you, start by living a truthful life. Once you live in the truth, you will not be easily deceived.

Molly Friedenfeld

#16. There is no monster more destructive than the inventive mind that has outstripped philosophy.

Ellen Glasgow

#17. It is more important to know how to mix and match the clothes than to spend money.

Valeria Mazza

#18. Economics is a study of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. It's purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about philosophy or values, anymore than it has to say about music or literature.

Thomas Sowell

#19. The taste for books was an early one. As a child he was sometimes found at midnight by a page still reading. They took his taper away, and he bred glow-worms to serve his purpose. They took the glow-worms away and he almost burnt the house down with a tinder.

Virginia Woolf

#20. One could construe the life of man as a great discourse in which the various people represent different parts of speech (the same might apply to states).

Soren Kierkegaard

#21. Real literature is something much better than a harmless instrument for getting through idle hours. The purpose of great literature is to help us to develop into full human beings.

Russell Kirk

#22. When death becomes an escape, when it becomes attractive, the purpose of life is fulfilled. To teach one it's futility, it's worthlessness, that is the purpose of life. Incongruously, its value lies in having imparted that lesson.
Bhanggi

Faiqa Mansab

#23. I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community.

Gil Scott-Heron

#24. [T]he habit of scientific analysis ... exhausts the material offered to it ...

Henri Frederic Amiel

#25. Tampon commercial, detergent commercial, maxi pad commercial, windex commercial - you'd think all women do is clean and bleed.

Gillian Flynn

#26. For us Africans, literature must serve a purpose: to expose, embarrass, and fight corruption and authoritarianism. It is understandable why the African artist is utilitarian.

Ama Ata Aidoo

#27. In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfill their mysterious purpose.

G.K. Chesterton

#28. The writers who reject tendentiousness and purpose in their work are the very ones who display it in every word they write. I could draw countless examples from the history of literature to show that the more a writer clamours for spiritual freedom, the more tendentious his work is liable to be.

Bjornstjerne Bjornson

#29. I have to believe that literature can effect change; otherwise, I would have no purpose in my life and would have wasted four years on 'Ilustrado.'

Miguel Syjuco

#30. That's the biggest purpose of religious gathering: permission to look terrible in public. We used to go to church to confess our worst behaviour, to be heard and forgiven, then to be redeemed and accepted back into our community
Chuck Palahniuk in interview with TMO

Chuck Palahniuk

#31. Literature is one of the few areas left where black and white feel some identity of purpose; we all struggle under censorship.

Nadine Gordimer

#32. Literature, for example, serves a pragmatic purpose. Like any form of Art, literature's mission is to make the fulfillment of our essential duties more bearable.

Muriel Barbery

#33. Samskrit has moulded the minds of our people to the extent to which they themselves are not conscious. Samskrit literature is national in one sense, but its purpose has been universal. That was why it commanded the attention of people who were not followers of a particular culture.

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

#34. Children's books aren't textbooks. Their primary purpose isn't supposed to be "Pick this up and it will teach you this." It's not how literature should be. You probably do learn something from every book you pick up, but it might be simply how to laugh.

J.K. Rowling

#35. The aim of science is to discover and illuminate truth. And that, I take it, is the aim of literature, whether biography or history ... It seems to me, then, that there can be no separate literature of science.

Rachel Carson

#36. He did not wholly understand the intricate play of ideas and the complex phrases, but as he read he sensed a strong, who purpose behind the words and he felt that he almost understood.

Carson McCullers

#37. The look of wistful passion in Kellan's eyes in that one brief glance almost had me running across the room to throw myself in his arms - Thoughtless

S.C. Stephens

#38. Thinking: The talking of the soul with itself

Plato