Literary Allusion Quotes & Sayings

For Hobie, who sorrowed over these elegant old remnants as if they were underfed children or mistreated cats, it was a point of duty to rescue what he could and then with his gifts as carpenter and joiner to recombine them into beautiful young Frankensteins that were in some cases plainly fanciful but in others such faithful models of the period that they were all but indistinguishable from the real thing. p452 — Donna Tartt

Extremely self-conscious in its craft, in many ways The Hand of Ethelberta is an exploration of fiction as illusion, which involves parody of the conventions it employs; romance, melodrama and farce, and a rejection of realism for absurdist and surrealistic effects. The 'hand' of Ethelberta is an obvious, ironic allusion to courtship, and the sub-title, 'A Comedy in Chapters', suggests the novel's affinity with the conventions of Restoration and eighteenth-century comedy of manners. — Geoffrey Harvey

Let us now celebrate the literary allusion. — Sherman Alexie

The Stetson passage is an allusion to Frazer theory in The Golden Bough that religion originated as agricultural engineering. Through a grotesque process of literalization, all of the dying gods and heroes in The Golden Bough, along with Christ and the Fisher King, are transferred from mythic to modern consciousness ( Frazer himself was an unabashed positivist) to be made explicable in scientific terms as fertilizer. — Jewel Spears Brooker

In the fatal course of the most painful ailments, sometimes [ ... ], sometimes there occur sweet mornings of perfect repose- and that not owning to some blessed pill or potion [ ... ] or at least without our knowing that the loving hand of despair slipped us the drug. — Vladimir Nabokov

I'd rather clean my toilet than go to a show-business party. — Shania Twain

Christopher Hitchens was a writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know. — Richard Dawkins

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic. — Anthony Minghella

After a victim is made to participate in an act of evil, the people in charge put a lot of energy into convincing the child or adult that he or she is evil and a perpetrator rather than a victim.p324 — Alison Miller

Feed your brothers and sisters simply, graciously, with generous care, and you will secure a place in their heart. — Maximillian Degenerez

Peace is not found in the sea.
It is found when I dream of eternity. — Craig Froman

I wished only to be set down in Canada, and take one honest walk there as I might in Concord woods of an afternoon. — Henry David Thoreau

Each moment that passes changes you ... You can't even own yourself. How can you ever hope to own anyone or anything else. — Bruce Lee

We put labels on people and fight wars over them. If we truly want harmony, we have to get past the labels. — Wayne Dyer

I'll give you a cake if you get him in the stream by the end of the afternoon,' Mori said to Six.

'Hold on,' Thaniel said. 'No making criminals of the orphans, Fagin.'

'But I want some cake,' Six frowned. 'And his name isn't Fagin. — Natasha Pulley