Literary history is the great morgue where all seek the dead ones whom they love, and to whom they are related. Heine.
Literary men are ... a perpetual priesthood. Carlyle.
Literature, as a field for glory, is an arena where a tomb may be more easily found than laurels; as a means of support, it is the very chance of chances. H. Giles.
Literature consists of all the books—and they 40 are not many—where moral truth and human passion are touched with a certain largeness, sanity, and attraction of form. John Morley.
Literature draws its sap from the deep soil of human nature's common and everlasting sympathies. Lowell.
Literature happens to be the only occupation in which wages are not given in proportion to the goodness of the work done. Froude.
Literature has her quacks no less than medicine: those who have erudition without genius, and those who have volubility without depth. Colton.
Literature has other aims than that of harmlessly amusing indolent, languid men. Carlyle.
Literature is a fragment of a fragment, and 45 of this but little is extant. Goethe.
Literature is a great staff, but a sorry crutch. Scott.