The collection / 32 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

32 results · Page 2 of 2Play this collection ▷

01c. 1960 AD

Dakin: The more you read, though, the more you'll see that literature is actually about losers.Scripps: No.Dakin: It's consolation. All literature is consolation.

Alan Bennett / quote

02c. 1960 AD

One reads for pleasure...it is not a public duty.

Alan Bennett / quote

03c. 1960 AD

And it occurred to her that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly developed. She could read the novel with ease and great pleasure, laughing at remarks, they were hardly jokes, that she had not even noticed before.

Alan Bennett / quote

04c. 1960 AD

I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment.

Alan Bennett / quote

05c. 1960 AD

I didn't even have a clear idea of why I wanted to go to Oxford - apart from the fact I had fallen in love with the architecture. It certainly wasn't out of some great sense of academic or intellectual achievement. In many ways, my education only began after I'd left university.

Alan Bennett / quote

06c. 1960 AD

All knowledge is precious whether or not it serves the slightest human use.

Alan Bennett / quote

07c. 1960 AD

Teachers need to feel they are trusted. They must be allowed some leeway to use their imagination; otherwise, teaching loses all sense of wonder and excitement.

Alan Bennett / quote

08c. 1960 AD

Full-blooded romantic love I wouldn't be able to write about.

Alan Bennett / quote