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Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.

Anthony Burgess

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Anthony Burgess
Age: 76 †
Born: 1917
Born: February 25
Died: 1993
Died: November 22
Author
Autobiographer
Composer
Dramaturge
Journalist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Novelist
Poet
Manchester
England
John Anthony Burgess Wilson
John Burgess Wilson
Joseph Kell
Becomes
Philosophy
Uplift
Literature
Commits
Moral
Ceases
Thing
Uplifting
Dull
Cease
Commit

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A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
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Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself.... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice.
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John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced.
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A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.
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The state is never so efficient as when it wants money.
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As a chamber hung round about with looking-glasses represents the face upon every turn, thus all the world doth the mercy and the bounty of God though that be visible, yet it discovers an invisible God and his invisible properties.
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Sanity is a handicap and liability if you're living in a mad world.
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The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch.
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Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
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I mean, there's little enough in this life, really, and you only find it worth living for the odd moments, and if you think you're going to have those odd moments again, then it makes life wonderful and have a meaning.
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It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.
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The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
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Beckett does not believe in God, though he seems to imply that God has committed an unforgivable sin by not existing.
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It'll be your own torture, he said, serious. I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.
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Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones...you are invited!
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And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. 'You felt ill this afternoon,' he said, 'because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all.
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When the State withers, humanity flowers.
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