Famous quotes by Novelists

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself a fool"

Anatole France, Novelist

"To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all"

Anatole France, Novelist

"Nine tenths of education is encouragement"

Anatole France, Novelist

"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing"

Anatole France, Novelist

"A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance"

Anatole France, Novelist

"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life"

William Faulkner, Novelist

"It's a shame that the only thing a man can do for eight hours a day is work. He can't eat for eight hours; he can't drink for eight hours; he can't make love for eight hours. The only thing a man can do for eight hours is work"

William Faulkner, Novelist

"I never know what I think about something until I read what I've written on it"

William Faulkner, Novelist

"Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief"

William Faulkner, Novelist

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself"

William Faulkner, Novelist

"That which costs little is less valued"

Miguel de Cervantes, Novelist

"That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them, and to love when we love them not"

Miguel de Cervantes, Novelist

"All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"I get angry about things, then go on and work"

Toni Morrison, Novelist

"A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead"

Leo Rosten, Novelist

"We see things as we are, not as they are"

Leo Rosten, Novelist

"A writer writes not because he is educated, but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood"

Leo Rosten, Novelist

"Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"Those who prepared for all the emergencies of life beforehand may equip themselves at the expense of joy"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"The sadness of the incomplete, the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"The king died and then the queen died is a story. The king died, and then queen died of grief is a plot"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"Be soft, even if you stand to get squashed"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"Kissing don't last: cookery do!"

George Meredith, Novelist

"There is one, knows not what, sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath"

Herman Melville, Novelist

"It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open"

Herman Melville, Novelist

"Toil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness"

Herman Melville, Novelist

"Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death"

Herman Melville, Novelist

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