Downfall/literature

Famous quotes containing the words downfall and/or literature:

“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

“How has the human spirit ever survived the terrific literature with which it has had to contend?”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)