A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can. — Edith Hamilton
Standardization, instead of individualization. Cheap books, instead of private press editions. Active literature, instead of passive leather bindings. — Jan Tschichold
Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another. — G. K. Chesterton
Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day. — Voltaire
Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective. — Brian Eno
Governments are suspicious of literature because it is a force that eludes them. — Emile Zola
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading. — G. M. Trevelyan
Literature is the question minus the answer. — Roland Barthes
Literature provides us with the opportunity to escape into fictional worlds that are ultimately rooted in human universals shaped by common biological forces. — Gad Saad
Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors. — Tristan Tzara
Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. — Fernando Pessoa
Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers. — Alma Gluck
Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers. — Carlos Fuentes
We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it. — F. Sionil José
Literature is air, and Im suffocating in mediocrity. — Armand Assante
Short Popular Literature Quotes
Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture. — Juan Ramon Jimenez
Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions. — Iris Murdoch
Literature has the power to change lives, minds, and hearts. — Cam'ron
A newspaper is a circulating library with high blood pressure. — Arthur Baer
Do not exchange your dignity for popularity.
Popular Book Quotes
Theorists write all the popular books on science: Heinz Pagels, Frank Wilczek, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, et al. And why not? They have all that spare time. — Leon M. Lederman
I wish I could write a beautiful book to break those hearts that are soon to cease to exist: a book of faith and small neat worlds and of people who live by the philosophies of popular songs. — Zelda Fitzgerald
Isn't it strange that I who have written only unpopular books should be such a popular fellow? — Albert Einstein
Avoid popularity; it has many snares and no real benefit.
My interest in chemistry was started by reading Robert Kennedy Duncan's popular books while a high school student in Des Moines, Iowa, so that after some delay when it was possible for me to go to college I had definitely decided to specialize in chemistry. — Wallace Carothers
I know that I am very popular in Holland, in fact I have visited Amsterdam several times to publicize my books. I have a great publisher in Holland and they have published all of my books in Dutch. — Jackie Collins
Publishers, naturally, loathe used books and have developed strategies to depress the secondhand market. They bring out new, even more expensive editions of popular textbooks every three to four years, in a classic cycle of planned obsolescence. — James Surowiecki
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room. — Peter Sellers
I first got to know Charles in the late seventies when I wrote an article and then a book about him and I think at the time he came across as quite appealing, it was probably the height of his popularity. — Anthony Holden
The best and most popular novelists do not, as a rule, have children in their books at all, and this is wise. Parents are about the only people who are interested in children, and they merely in their own ones. — E. M. Delafield
I’m sorry that people are so jealous of me [Gretchen Wieners], but I can’t help it that I’m popular. — Rosalind Wiseman
Popular Culture Quotes
Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. — Clark Gable
The test of a government is not how popular it is with the powerful and privileged few but how honestly and fairly it deals with the many who must depend on it. — Jimmy Carter
The concept that an artist would be revered by popular culture is an immediate dismissal of his relevance as an artist. — Thomas Kinkade
I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. — Marlon Brando
The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization. — Fredric Jameson
A few words of Hindi appear here or there, but it's all Urdu. I feel that if the popular culture, which is what Hindi films are, uses Urdu, it's not going to diminish. — Ismail Merchant
Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture. — Morley Safer
I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something. — Kim Gordon
My older sister was at the cusp of new wave, and I had older brothers from my father's first marriage who were rock 'n' roll guys, so I was exposed to a lot of popular culture. — Paul Thomas Anderson
Popular Film Quotes
Listen to them, the children of the night. What music they make! — Bram Stoker
I'll make him an offer he can't refuse. — Mario Puzo
Our point isn't to make an examination of popular film but to illustrate that the yearning for a heroic adventure lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures. — Alan Hirsch
Audience members are only concerned about the story, the concept, the bells and whistles and the noise that a popular film starts to make even before it's popular. So audiences will not be drawn to the technology; they'll be drawn to the story. And I hope it always remains that way. — Steven Spielberg
It's become very popular in contemporary films to have the twist ending. — Bill Paxton
My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die! — William Goldman
I was definitely surprised when Talk Radio took off as a play. As a film it has become somewhere between a popular thing and a cult thing. — Eric Bogosian
Popular films are so powerful and compelling that it's often easier to accept their versions of history than the much more complicated true stories. — Melissa Harris-Perry
I'm not in this business to win a popularity contest, I just want to be a good actor. Well, you've failed at being a good actor. Why not try for the popularity contest? — Roger Moore
I was never a fanatical movie person. There are many popular films I absolutely love like anyone else. Having said that, I don't have time to go to the movies very much. I work a lot of different things, I'm always busy. But I'm always happy to see a popular movie. — John Malkovich
Popular Education Quotes
It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences. — Aristotle
Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death. — Neil Postman
I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost. — Woodrow Wilson
In America, educators punish those who actually think for themselves. There is only acceptance for popular opinion. — Bryant H. McGill
The fact is remarkable, that though education in its higher degrees is popularly neglected in Siam, there is scarcely a man or woman in the empire who cannot read and write. — Anna Leonowens
The country experience was more of a departure. When you consider my education and my upbringing, you can see that was more of country rock outgrowth of my popular music aspirations. — Tom Wopat
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular. — Laurence J. Peter
The central challenge for educational systems around the world is the substitution of effectiveness for popularity. — Douglas B. Reeves
Everyone drank to popular education and to the irrigation of Uzbekistan. — Ilya Ilf
Good character is more important than wealth, good looks, popularity and even education. These things do not guarantee happiness and often they become obstacles to developing good character. — Michael Josephson
Magic Realism is not new. The label's new, the specific Latin American form of it is new, its modern popularity is new, but it's been around as long as literature has been around. — Terri Windling
Gossip is more popular than literature. — Hugh Leonard
Nothing in medical literature today communicates the idea that women's bodies are well-designed for birth. Ignorance of the capacities of women's bodies can flourish and quickly spread into the popular culture when the medical profession is unable to distinguish between ancient wisdom and superstitious belief. — Ina May Gaskin
I am already so popular that anyone who vilifies me becomes more popular than I am. — Karl Kraus
Popular literature and culture used to reflect people's aspirations, pain, and passion. All those particular things are no longer available to us. — Danny Glover
The masses are still ungrateful or ignorant. They prefer murder, poisonings, and crimes generally to a literature possessed of style and feeling. — George Sand
What good is an obscenity trial except to popularize literature? — Rex Stout
For the serious mediocre writer convention makes him sound like a lot of other people; for the popular writer it gives him a formula he can exploit; for the serious good writer it releases his experiences or emotions from himself and incorporates them into literature, where they belong. — Northrop Frye
PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. A desiccated epigram. — Ambrose Bierce
The popular will cannot be taken for granted, it must be created. — Herbert Croly
The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof — Mary McCarthy
I am not recommending "popular" literature which aims at the lowest. — Jean-Paul Sartre
The so-called literature of escape, with its growing popularity, is in part a revolt against the tyranny of clocks. — Roy Bedichek
In America, the only truly popular art form is the movies. Most people consider painting a hobby and literature, schoolwork. — Brad Holland
I see myself as a very eclectic person and artist. I use all kinds of sources for the work as maybe some large pieces. Ideas come from all kinds of areas; literature, popular culture, dreams, you name it. — Michael C. McMillen
Korean feminism is on the brink of death. Korea has a less clear boundary between popular literature and serious literature than in other countries. I feel that feminism is abandoned like a product that was a craze in the past. — Kim Hyesoon
Maria Edgeworth grumbled against vandals who ruined immortal works by quoting the life out of them. "How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets." Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, scissored, patched, and frayed. — Willis Regier
All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature. — Walter Mosley
German writings attain popularity through a great name, or through personalities, or through good connections, or through effort,or through moderate immorality, or through accomplished incomprehensibility, or through harmonious platitude, or through versatile boredom, or through constant striving after the absolute. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Physicists use 'God' as a metaphor more often than other scientists-- especially in popular writing, but in the technical literature as well. Of course, this is just a metaphor for order at the heart of confusion. A rational or aesthetic pattern underlying reality is far from a theistic God. — Taner Edis
to be honest and yet popular is almost as difficult in literature as it is in life. — Ellen Glasgow
[On collectors of quotations:] How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets. — Maria Edgeworth
There is a man who exists as one of the most popular objects of leadership, legislation, and quasi-literature in the history of all men. . . . This man, that object of attention, attack, and vast activity, cannot make himself be heard, let alone understood. He has never been listened to. . . . That man is Black and alive in white America where the media of communication do not allow the delivery of his own voice, his own desires, his own rage. — June Jordan
We must protect the minority writers because they are the research workers of literature. They keep it alive. It has been fashionable of late to seek out and force such writers into more popular channels, to the detriment of both writer and an unprepared public. — Anais Nin
The selection of a subject is to the author what choice of position is to the general,--once skilfully determined, the battle is already half won. Of a few writers it may be said that they are popular in despite of their subjects--but of a great many more it may be observed that they are popular because of them. — Christian Nestell Bovee
There’s always been a need for horror fiction, though - ghost stories have been a staple of every human society since the beginning of recorded literature - and while commercially the field may have its ups and downs, it will never go away. Hell, look at the Bible: gods, devils, ghosts, witches, giants, resurrections. That’s one big horror story. And it’s the most popular book on the planet. — Bentley Little
Is it not singular how some men continue to obtain the reputation of popular authorship without adding a word to the literature of their country worthy of note?? To puff and to get one's self puffed have become different branches of a new profession. — Anthony Trollope
Parents...rigidly monitor the selection of television programs...and other forms of entertainment for your family. Foster in your homes a love of knowledge through uplifting literature; wholesome books; selective movies; classical and exemplary popular music; entertainment that uplifts and edifies the spirit and mind. — David B. Haight
You have to expect the raps when you have achieved popularity as a writer — Irwin Shaw
Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less. — Herbert Croly
The same authorities who insist upon beginnings, middles, and ends, declare that Great Literature (by which they mean the stories they have been taught to admire) is about love and death, while mere popular fiction like this is about sex and violence. One reader's sex, alas, is another's love; and one's violence, another's death. — Gene Wolfe
I believe that a life of integrity I the most fundamental source of personal worth. I do not agree with the popular success literature that says that self-esteem is primarily a matter of mind set, of attitude-that you can psych yourself into peace of mind. Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way. — Stephen Covey
And all over the world, the old literature, the popular literature, is the same. It consists of very dignified sorrow and very undignified fun. Its sad tales are of broken hearts; its happy tales are of broken heads. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
I have spent my spare time studying literature popular with young women of this planet. One should always study the battlefield." Sean glanced at him. "And?" "I suggest you give up now. According to my research, in a vampire-werewolf love triangle, the vampire always gets the girl. — Ilona Andrews
Literature is always personal, always one man's vision of the world, one man's experience, and it can only be popular when men are ready to welcome the visions of others. — William Butler Yeats
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. — Gilbert K. Chesterton
Religion I have defined as "Another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art". — Ezra Pound
In Conclusion
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