profound literature Quotes

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

Read good, big important things.

The truly great books are the few books that are over everybody's head all of the time.

If you are a man of learning, read something classic, a history of the human struggle and don't settle for mediocre verse.

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you.

Real literature is something much better than a harmless instrument for getting through idle hours. The purpose of great literature is to help us to develop into full human beings.

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful.