The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

Every quotation a nineteenth-century speaker or writer might want, grouped under its subject, with the author, the date and the source given as exactly as Hoyt could manage.

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Literature: Quotations from Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations

Literary Men are * * * a perpetual priesthood.— CARLYLE — Essays. State of German
Literature. Literature is the thought of thinking Souls.— CARLYLE — Essays. Memoirs of the Life
of Scott. But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.— X. ISAAC DISRAELI — Curiosities of
Literature. Pamphlets. Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.— ISAAC DISRAELI — Literary Character. Ch. XXIV.
Time the great destroyer of other men's happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.— ISAAC DISRAELI — Literary Character of Men of Genius. Ch. XXII.
Republic of letters. C.— HENRY FIELDING — Tom Jones. Bk. XIV. Ch. I.
Our poetry in the eighteenth century was prose; our prose in the seventeenth, poetry. J. C. and A. W. HARE-Guesses at Truth. The leader, mingling with the vulgar host, Is with the common mass of matter lost!— HOMER — Odyssey. Bk. IV. L. 397.
Pope's trans. *** Aman of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.— MACAULAY — On Sir William Temple.
There is first the literature of knowledge, and secondly, the literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function of the second is to move; the first is a rudder, the second an oar or a sail. The first speaks to the mere discursive understanding; the second speaks ultimately, it may happen, to the higher understanding or reason, but always through affections of pleasure and sympathy.— THOMAS DE QUINCEY — Essays on the
Poets. Alexander Pope. We cultivate literature on a little oat-meal.— SYDNEY SMITH — Lady Holland's Memoir. Vol. I. P. 23.
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