Literary Value Quotes

One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.

Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.

All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature.

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.

It is usual to speak in a playfully apologetic tone about one's adult enjoyment of what are called 'children's books.' I think the convention a silly one. No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty-except, of course, books of information. The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all. A mature palate will probably not much care for crème de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.

Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.

great books are the ones we need

Some literature is knowledge, some is just data. But if I can get a "happy" ending - which is when for the characters I'm writing about, something happens that they move from wherever they are in the beginning to knowledge or wisdom, they know something they never would have acknowledged or realized if it hadn't been for my book - that for me is what literature does.

A book must have moral purpose to be any good. Why, I don't know.

I believe that by releasing "passing interest/low keepsake-value literature" from the burden of physicality, you are actually releasing the words from their worst liability: the price and inconvenience of actual bookness.

I feel a lot of adult fiction looks down on plot as a lesser form of literature.

When I became poet laureate, I was in a slightly uncomfortable position because I think a lot of poetry isn't worth reading.

There is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.

I think instead writers and publishers and readers need to go to the places where people are, and make the argument that there is great value to the quiet, contemplative process of reading a novel, that reading great books carefully offers pleasures and consolations that no iPad app ever can.

When it's between the covers of a book, content is perceived to have literary substance - or more so that it might otherwise.

After a careful examination I concluded that the story would not only repay the cost of publication in book form, but would yield some profit. Possibly I was helped to that conclusion by my firm conviction that the volume would prove a strong anti-slavery document.

if a book is not good enough for a grownup, it is not good enough for a child.

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.

Advances in technology neither impede nor augment literature.

Good books are irrefutable, and bad books refute themselves.

Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.

Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

There's no literary merit in my books.

For years, I had heard about the lack of interest in literature in the U.S. and I had complained about it. I failed to understand how people could fail to be moved by art.

Written by a woman automatically is better.