Literature/essays

Famous quotes containing the words literature and/or essays:

“The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

“I have been reporting club meetings for four years and I am tired of hearing reviews of the books I was brought up on. I am tired of amateur performances at occasions announced to be for purposes either of enjoyment or improvement. I am tired of suffering under the pretense of acquiring culture. I am tired of hearing the word “culture” used so wantonly. I am tired of essays that let no guilty author escape quotation.”
—Josephine Woodward, U.S. author. As quoted in Everyone Was Brave, ch. 3, by William L. O’Neill (1969)