quotes from classic

Poetry criticism at its worst today is mean in spirit and spiteful in intent, as if determined to inflict the wound that will spur the artist to new heights if it does not cripple him or her.

more quotes from David Lehman

If you have too good a time writing hostile reviews, you'll injure not only your sensibility but your soul.

more quotes from David Lehman

If you're not paying for it through the health plan, you pay for it in the emergency room.

more quotes from David Lehman

Words can have no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbit and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used.

more quotes from David Lehman

The brave deserve the lovely - every woman may be won.

more quotes from Charles Godfrey Leland

It was the noise Of ancient trees falling while all was still Before the storm, in the long interval Between the gathering clouds and that light breeze Which Germans call the Wind's bride.

more quotes from Charles Godfrey Leland

They saw a Dream of Loveliness descending from the train.

more quotes from Charles Godfrey Leland

Aspiring to a souffle, he achieves a pancake at which the reader saws without much appetite.

more quotes from John Leonard

Isn't it amazing the way the future succeeds in creating an appropriate past?

more quotes from John Leonard

Books fall from Garry Wills like leaves from a maple tree in a sort of permanent October.

more quotes from John Leonard

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.

more quotes from John Leonard

In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold.

more quotes from John Leonard

Happy people are ignoramuses and glory is nothing else but success, and to achieve it one only has to be cunning.

more quotes from Mikhail Lermontov

For me the greatest beauty always lies in the greatest clarity.

more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

They make glorious shipwreck who are lost in seeking worlds.

more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

A single grateful thought toward heaven is the most perfect prayer.

more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

One can drink too much, but one never drinks enough.

more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

The most deadly fruit is borne by the hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship.

more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

He who doesn't lose his wits over certain things has no wits to lose.

more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

For the will and not the gift makes the giver.

more quotes from Gotthold Ephraim Lessing