Famous quotes containing the word literary:
“It is a good lessonthough it may often be a hard onefor a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the worlds dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (18041864)
“Learning is, in too many cases, but a foil to common sense; a substitute for true knowledge. Books are less often made use of as spectacles to look at nature with, than as blinds to keep out its strong light and shifting scenery from weak eyes and indolent dispositions.... The learned are mere literary drudges.”
—William Hazlitt (17781830)
“Humorists can never start to take themselves seriously. Its literary suicide.”
—Erma Bombeck (b. 1927)