Profoundly inspirational literature quotes will make you look at life differently and help you live a meaningful life.
Famous Literature Quotes
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. Emily Bronte
What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though. J.D. Salinger
It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be. J.K. Rowling
Only the very weak minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry. Cassandra Clare
I assure you that the world is not so amusing as something we imagined. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent. Victor Hugo
One day I will find the right words, and they all will be simple. Jack Kerouac
That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong. F. Scott Fitzgerald
The author says one character’s definition of a classic is any book he’d heard of before he was thirty. Sinclair Lewis
Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one. Terry Pratchett
There are years that ask questions and years that answer. Zora Neale Hurston
There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature. P.G. Wodehouse
Sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Lewis Carroll
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. Italo Calvino
The best teacher is experienced and not through someone’s distorted point of view. Jack Kerouac
She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. Annie Dillard
Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion. Jane Austen
Have a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts. Charles Dickens
I felt purged and holy and ready for a new life. Sylvia Plath
Literature is a textually transmitted disease, normally contracted in childhood. Jane Yolen
I hope she’ll be a fool that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool. F. Scott Fitzgerald
Jane, be still; don’t struggle so like a wild, frantic bird, that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being, with an independent will; which I now exert to leave you. Charlotte Brontë
Time, which sees all things, has found you out. Sophocles
It’s not all bad. Heightened self consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self loathing they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. Stephen Fry
They looked at each other, baffled, in love and hate. William Golding
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography. On that day when she first knew she could read, she made a vow to read one book a day as long as she lived. Betty Smith
It’s funny. All one has to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to. J D Salinger
That’s what literature is. It’s the people who went before us, tapping out messages from the past, from beyond the grave, trying to tell us about life and death! Listen to them! Connie Willis
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life. F Scott Fitzgerald
So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message You are not alone. Roald Dahl
Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. Harper Lee
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Answer to the ultimate question of Life, The Universe and Everything is 42! Douglas Adams
He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head. John Green
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known. Charles Dickens
I know every book of mine by its smell, and I have but to put my nose between the pages to be reminded of all sorts of things. George Gissing
And, of course men know best about everything, except what women know better. George Eliot
Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay. Christopher Hitchens
I gave my whole heart up, for him to hold. Geoffrey Chaucer
It was culture as class performance, literature fetishised for its ability to take educated people on false emotional journeys, so that they might afterwards feel superior to the uneducated people whose emotional journeys they liked to read about. Sally Rooney
If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. George Orwell
When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young. Maya Angelou
Moonlight drowns out all but the brightest stars. J.R.R. Tolkein
No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons. Ishmael Reed
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old. Jonathan Swift
The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries. René Descartes
Here let dead poetry rise once more to life. Dante Alighieri
I couldn’t live a week without a private library indeed, I’d part with all my furniture and squat and sleep on the floor before I’d let go of the 1500 or so books I possess. H. P. Lovecraft
Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. Mary Shelley
I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine. Emily Dickinson
Predominant options are generally the opinions of the generation that is vanishing. Flora Rheta Schreiber
Every man’s memory is his private literature. Aldous Huxley
Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. William Makepeace Thackeray
Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others. Virginia Woolf
It had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid. George Eliot
People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. G. K. Chesterton
The world is full of places to which I want to return. Ford Madox
The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones for life is short. Arthur Schopenhauer
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! Nathaniel Hawthorne
I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day. Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies. Antoine de Saint Exupéry
That’s the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people’s. Fredrik Backman
It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. Lewis Carroll
She was fascinated with words. To her, words were things of beauty, each like a magical powder or potion that could be combined with other words to create powerful spells. Dean Koontz
If you tell the truth you do not need a good memory! Mark Twain
We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same. Anne Frank
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. Jane Austen
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words. Ursula K. Le Guin
I have got key to my castle in the air, but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen. Louisa May Alcott
Sometimes two people have to fall apart, to realize how much they need to fall back together. Colleen Hoover
Whatever happens to your body, your soul will survive, untouched. J.K. Rowling
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves. E.M. Forster
Life is not always perfect. Like a road, it has many bends, ups and down, but that’s its beauty. Amit Ray
My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world. Dejan Stojanovic
Beauty is an enormous, unmerited gift given randomly, stupidly. Khaled Hosseini
The ability to read awoke inside of me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. Malcolm X
We are asleep until we fall in love! Leo Tolstoy
The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read. Benjamin Franklin
I hope you enjoy reading this collection of powerful literature quotes. Let me know which one you like most.
