Literature

Quotations on Literature

I was working on the proof op one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Mr Hall Caine, it is true, aims at the grandiose, but then he writes at the top of his voice. He is so loud that one cannot hear what he says.

One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.

One should never talk of a moral or an immoral poem – poems are either well written or badly written, that is all.

Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

Mr Henry James writes fiction as if it were painful duty.

I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the rain.

M. Zola is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can at least be dull.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to obvious is to be inartistic.

We have been able to have fine poetry in England because the public do not read it, and consequently do not influence it. The public likes to insult poets because they are individual, but once they have insulted them, they leave them alone.

With regard to modern journalists, they always apologize to one in private for what they have written against one in public.

I hate vulgar realism in literature. The man who would call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

I quite admit that modern novels have many good points. All I insist on is that, as a class, they are quite unreadable.

… a form of poetry which cannot possibly hurt anybody, even if translated into French.

The Peerage is one book a young man about town should know thoroughly and it is the best thing in fiction the English have ever done.