Novelist

Explore 912 quotes by Novelists

My advice to you is not to inquire into why or whither, but just enjoy your ice cream while it's on your plate-that's my philosophy.

Thornton Wilder

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Topic

Living in the moment

Author

Thornton Wilder

Source

The Skin of Our Teeth

Medium

Play

Genre

Comedy (play) Comedy

Language

English

Time

1942 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Wilder, Thornton. The Skin of Our Teeth. 15 Oct. 1942, Shubert Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, USA, act 1.

Current Citation

Wilder, Thornton. "The Skin of Our Teeth." Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, and The Matchmaker. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2020, act 1.

And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.

Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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Topic

Time Happiness The human condition

Author

Milan Kundera

Source

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Medium

Novel

Language

Czech

Time

1984 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Kundera, Milan. L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being]. Gallimard, 1984.

Current Citation

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim. Harper Perennial, 2009.

I shall never marry; I regard that now as an established fact, and on the whole a very respectable one; I am both happy enough and miserable enough, as it is, and don't wish to add to either side of the account.

Henry James

More information about this quote

Topic

Single life Marriage Relationships

Author

Henry James

Source

Letters of Henry James

Medium

Letter

Language

English

Time

1884 1880s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

James, Henry. Letter to Grace Norton. 3 Nov. 1884.

Current Citation

James, Henry. "November 3 [1883] To Grace Norton." The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1883–1884, edited by Michael Anesko and Greg W. Zacharias. Vol. 2, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

There's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time.

Edith Wharton

More information about this quote

Topic

Happiness

Author

Edith Wharton

Medium

Short story

Language

English

Time

1908 1900s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Wharton, Edith. "The Last Asset." The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.

The crown of life is neither happiness nor annihilation; it is understanding.

Winifred Holtby

More information about this quote

Topic

Meaning of life

Speaker

Winifred Holtby

Language

English

Time

1940 1940s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Holtby, Winifred. Quoted in Testament of Friendship: The Story of Winifred Holtby, written by Vera Brittain. Macmillan & Co., 1940.

The Maker of a universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.

Sinclair Lewis

Elmer Gantry

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Read Elmer Gantry at Project Gutenberg

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Topic

Sabbath God and man

Author

Sinclair Lewis

Source

Elmer Gantry

Medium

Novel

Genre

Satire

Language

English

Time

1927 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry. Harcourt Trade Publishers, 1927, ch. 17.

Current Citation

Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry. Signet, 2007, ch. 17.

The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke us and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it.

Milan Kundera

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

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Topic

Effects of the past The past

Author

Milan Kundera

Source

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Medium

Novel

Language

Czech

Time

1979 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Kundera, Milan. Le Livre du rire et de l'oubli [The Book of Laughter and Forgetting]. Gallimard, 1979.

Current Citation

Kundera, Milan. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, translated by Aaron Asher. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1999.

He had that nameless charm, with a strong magnetism which can only be called "it."

Elinor Glyn

More information about this quote

Topic

Charisma

Author

Elinor Glyn

Source

It

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1927 1920s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Glyn, Elinor. "It." Cosmopolitan Magazine, Feb. - Mar. 1927.

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful... Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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Topic

Memory Love

Author

Milan Kundera

Source

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Medium

Novel

Language

Czech

Time

1984 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Kundera, Milan. L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being]. Gallimard, 1984.

Current Citation

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim. Harper Perennial, 2009.

Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... That the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life.

Tom Wolfe

The Bonfire of the Vanities

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Topic

Fathers and sons Fatherhood

Author

Tom Wolfe

Source

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1987 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Wolfe, Tom. The Bonfire of the Vanities. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1987.

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view) consists of its attitudes towards those who are at its mercy: animals.

Milan Kundera

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

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More information about this quote

Topic

Man and animals

Author

Milan Kundera

Source

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Medium

Novel

Language

Czech

Time

1984 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Kundera, Milan. L'insoutenable légèreté de l'être [The Unbearable Lightness of Being]. Gallimard, 1984.

Current Citation

Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by Michael Henry Heim. Harper Perennial, 2009.

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

Kingsley Amis

One Fat Englishman

More information about this quote

Topic

Catholicism

Author

Kingsley Amis

Source

One Fat Englishman

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1963 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 2

Citation

Amis, Kingsley. One Fat Englishman. Harcourt, Brace & World/Gollancz, 1963.

Prose was born yesterday-this is what we must tell ourselves. Poetry is pre-eminently the medium of past literatures. All the metrical combinations have been tried but nothing like this can be said of prose.

Gustave Flaubert

More information about this quote

Topic

Poetry and prose Prose Poetry

Author

Gustave Flaubert

Source

Letters of Gustave Flaubert

Medium

Letter

Language

French

Time

1852 1850s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. Letter to Louise Colet. 24 Apr. 1852.

Current Citation

Flaubert, Gustave. The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, translated and edited by Francis Steegmuller. Faber and Faber, 1981.

All the animals, the plants, the minerals, even other kinds of men, are being broken and reassembled every day, to preserve an elite few, who are the loudest to theorize on freedom, but the least free of all.

Thomas Pynchon

Gravity's Rainbow

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Topic

Capitalism Man and nature Environmental destruction

Author

Thomas Pynchon

Source

Gravity's Rainbow

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1973 1970s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity's Rainbow. Viking Press, 1973.

The national park idea, the best idea we ever had, was inevitable as soon as Americans learned to confront the wild continent not with fear and cupidity but with delight, wonder, and awe.

Wallace Stegner

More information about this quote

Topic

National parks Conservation Man and nature Nature

Author

Wallace Stegner

Language

English

Time

1983 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Stegner, Wallace. "The Best Idea We Ever Had." Marking the Sparrow's Fall: The Making of the American West. H. Holt, 1998, p. 137.

Does history repeat itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce? No, that's too grand, too considered a process. History just burps, and we taste again that raw-onion sandwich it swallowed centuries ago.

Julian Barnes

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Topic

History

Author

Julian Barnes

Source

A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters

Language

English

Time

1989 1980s 20th century

Authentication Score 1

Citation

Barnes, Julian. "Parenthesis." A HIstory of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters. Jonathan Cape/Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.

A desire for wealth is the source of all progress. Civilization comes from what men call greed. Let your mercenary tendencies be combined with honesty and they cannot take you astray.

Anthony Trollope

Read Can You Forgive Her? at Project Gutenberg

More information about this quote

Topic

Greed Capitalism Progress

Speaker

Plantagenet Palliser

Author

Anthony Trollope

Source

Can You Forgive Her?

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1864 1860s 19th century

Authentication Score 3

Original Citation

Trollope, Anthony. Can You Forgive Her? 1864-1865. Serial.

Current Citation

Trollope, Anthony. Can You Forgive Her? Penguin Classics, 1975.

War is hell, and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time.

Ian Hay

More information about this quote

Topic

War and peace War

Speaker

Captain Wagstaffe

Author

Ian Hay

Source

The First Hundred Thousand

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1915 1910s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Hay, Ian. "The First Hundred Thousand." Blackwood's Magazine, 1915.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer

More information about this quote

Topic

Democracy

Author

Norman Mailer

Source

The Presidential Papers

Genre

Political literature

Language

English

Time

1964 1960s 20th century

Authentication Score 3

Citation

Mailer, Norman. The Presidential Papers. Bantam Books, 1964, preface.

From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.

W. Somerset Maugham

Cakes and Ale

More information about this quote

Topic

Old vs. young Wisdom

Author

W. Somerset Maugham

Source

Cakes and Ale

Medium

Novel

Language

English

Time

1930 1930s 20th century

Authentication Score 0

Original Citation

Maugham, William Somerset. Cakes and Ale, or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard. William Heinemann/Garden City Publishing Co., 1930.

Current Citation

Maugham, William Somerset. Cakes and Ale. Vintage, 2000.