Modern Literature Quotes:

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

- Ernest Hemingway

topic: Book, Usa, Literature, Modern Literature, Modern War

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility!

- Oscar Wilde

topic: Simple, Honor, Modern Life, Life Is Simple, Modern Literature

This duality has been reflected in classical as well as modern literature as reason versus passion, or mind versus intuition. The split between the conscious mind and the unconscious. There are moments in each of our lives when our verbal-intellect suggests one course, and our hearts, or intuition, another.

- Robert E. Ornstein

topic: Heart, Passion, Intuition, Modern Literature, Conscious Mind

Perversity is the muse of modern literature.

- Susan Sontag

topic: Literature, Muse, Modern, Modern Literature, Perversity

Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.

- William Dean Howells

topic: War, Degrees, Doe, Modern Literature, Good Literature

Twentieth-century American poetry has been one of the glories of modern literature.

- Helen Vendler

topic: Literature, Glory, Modern, Modern Literature, American Poetry

Modern literature seduces with insults, riddles, and inside stories.

- Mason Cooley

topic: Stories, Literature, Insult, Modern Literature

We are no petty people. We are one of the great stocks of Burke; we are the people of Swift, the people of Emmet, the people of Parnell. We have created most of the modern literature of this country. We have created the best of its political intelligence.

- William Butler Yeats

topic: Country, People, Political, Modern Literature, Parnell

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

- Irving Howe

source: Irving Howe (1980). “Celebrations and attacks: thirty years of literary and cultural commentary”, Harcourt

topic: Philosophy, Looks, Literature, Modern Literature

The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn... tired of common sense and civilization.

- F. L. Lucas

source: F. L. Lucas (2015). “The Search for Good Sense: Four Eighteenth-Century Characters: Johnson, Chesterfield, Boswell and Goldsmith”, p.21, Bloomsbury Publishing

topic: Art, War, Tired, Modern Literature, Literature And Art

Well, there's just some universal truths in a way that I've just observed to be true. You read Voltaire. You read modern literature. Anywhere you go, there's these observations about romantic love and what it does people, and these rotten feelings that rarely are people meaning to do that to each other.

- Feist

source: "Feist: A Pop Star With A Punk-Rock Past". "Morning Edition" with David Greene, www.npr.org. September 30, 2011.

topic: Happiness, Romantic Love, People, Modern Literature, Universal Truth

I hate brandy...it stinks of modern literature.

- Harold Pinter

source: Harold Pinter (1979). “Betrayal”, p.116, Grove Press

topic: Hate, Literature, Modern, Modern Literature, Brandy

I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much.

- Vladimir Putin

topic: Reading, Literature, Chekhov, Modern Literature, Classical Literature

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably 'Doctor Who.' What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

- Terry Pratchett

topic: Jobs, Thinking, Doctors, Modern Literature, Parallel Universe

Roberto Calasso's survey of the renewed interest in myth demonstrates how decisive the gods' influence was on modern literature. Calasso is not only immensely learned; he is one of the most original thinkers and writers we have today.

- Charles Simic

topic: Modern Literature