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When people cannot write good literature it is perhaps natural that they should lay down rules how good literature should be written.

— George Saintsbury

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More quotes by George Saintsbury

Nothing is more curious than the almost savage hostility that Humour excites in those who lack it.

Never judge a critic by your agreement with his likes and dislikes.

Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.

Let us also once more rejoice in, and thank God for, the fact that we know nothing about Homer, and practically nothing about Shakespeare.

Oratory is, after all, the prose literature of the savage.

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: George Saintsbury (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.