Jules Renard

"Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to people who have none."

- Jules Renard, author

Oscar Wilde

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”

- Oscar Wilde, poet, novelist, dramatist and critic

Oscar Wilde

“No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.”

- Oscar Wilde, poet, novelist, dramatist and critic

Henry David Thoreau

"It is never too late to give up your prejudices."

- Henry David Thoreau, author, poet and developmental critic

H. L. Mencken

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

- H. L. Mencken, journalist, editor, satirist, critic

George Bernard Shaw

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

- George Bernard Shaw, critic and playwright

Oscar Wilde

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly.”

- Oscar Wilde, poet, novelist, dramatist and critic

Henry David Thoreau

"In wildness is the preservation of the world."

- Henry David Thoreau, author, poet and development critic

Lawrence Clark Powell

“Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow...”

- Lawrence Clark Powell, librarian, critic, author

George Bernard Shaw

“I want to be all used up when I die.”

- George Bernard Shaw, critic and playwright

Oscar Wilde

“Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.”

- Oscar Wilde, poet, novelist, dramatist and critic

Cesare Pavese

"The only joy in the world is to begin."

- Cesare Pavese, author, poet, critic

William Hazlitt

"The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves."

- William Hazlitt, author, philosopher and critic

Henry David Thoreau

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."

- Henry David Thoreau, author poet developmental critic

George Bernard Shaw

"Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough."

- George Bernard Shaw, critic and playwright

Henry David Thoreau

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."

- Henry David Thoreau, author, poet, developmental critic

Oscar Wilde

“True friends stab you in the front.”

 - Oscar Wilde, poet, novelist, dramatist and critic

Graham Greene

"I can believe only in love that strikes suddenly out of a clear sky:
I do not believe in the slow germination of friendship
Or one that asks 'why?'
Because our love came savagely, suddenly, like an actor of war,
I cannot conceive a love that rises gently and subsides without a scar."

- Graham Greene, author, playwright, literary critic

Wendell Berry

"The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it."

- Wendell Berry, author, critic, academic

George Bernard Shaw

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."

- George Bernard Shaw, critic and playwright