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Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.

Literature

Literature is the thought of thinking Souls.
Carlyle—Essays. Memoirs of the Life of Scott.

Literary Men are***a perpetual priesthood.
Carlyle—Essays. State of German Literature.

I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.
Dickens. Speech at Liverpool Banquet, 1869.

But, indeed, we prefer books to pounds; and we love manuscripts better than florins; and we prefer small pamphlets to war horses.
Isaac D’Israeli—Curiosities of Literature. Pamphlets.

Time the great destroyer of other men’s happiness, only enlarges the patrimony of literature to its possessor.
Isaac D’Israeli—Literary Character of Men of Genius. Ch. XXII.

Literature is an avenue to glory, ever open for those ingenious men who are deprived of honours or of wealth.
Isaac D’Israeli—Literary Character of Men of Genius. Ch. XXIV.

Republic of letters.
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 death of Dr. Hudson is a loss to the republick of letters.
William King—Letter. Jan. 7, 1719. Same phrase occurs in the Spectator. Commonwealth of letters is used by Addison—Spectator. No. 529. Nov. 6, 1712.

***A man of the world amongst men of letters, a man of letters amongst men of the world.
Macaulay—On Sir William Temple.

La république des lettres.
The republic of letters.
Molière—Le Mariage forcé. Sc. 6. (1664).

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.

La mode d’aimer Racine passera comme la mode du café.
The fashion of liking Racine will pass away like that of coffee.
Mme. de Sévigné—According to Voltaire, Letters, Jan. 29, 1690, who connected two remarks of hers to make the phrase; one from a letter March 16, 1679, the other, March 10, 1672. La Harpe reduced the mot to “Racine passera comme le café?”

We cultivate literature on a little oat-meal.
Sydney Smith—Lady Holland’s Memoir. Vol. I. P. 23.

The great Cham of literature. [Samuel Johnson.]
Smollett—Letter to Wilkes, March 16, 1759.