“Life showed itself to me in different colors after I had once read Turgenev; it became more serious, more awful, and with mystical responsibilities I had not known before. My gay American horizons were bathed in the vast melancholy of the Slav, patient, agnostic, trustful.” CultureLiteratureOptimismPessimismRussian Novel Author:William Dean Howells
“Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.” WorldWantMayDoeWarMomentsSpiritLiteratureChristModernDegreesWasteDenyWitnessWorking ItInferiorsModern LiteratureGood Literature Book:The Friendly Fire Source: The Friendly Fire
“It's a curious thing, this thing we call civilization...we think it is an affair of epochs, and nations. It's really an affair of individuals. One brother will be civilized and the other a barbarian...All civilization comes through literature now, especially in our country. A Greek got his civilization by talking and looking, and in some measure a Parisian may still do it. But we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise.” ThinkingMayStillsCountryLiteratureIndividualNationsTalkingBrotherCivilizationAffairOur CountryCuriousGreekCivilizedMonumentBarbarians Author:William Dean Howells
