Books Quote by Henry James

When we read a literary work (or, in some instances, listen to music) our imagination is stimulated, we feel various emotions, and we arrive…

— Philip Kitcher

Taste is the literary conscience of the soul.

— Joseph Joubert

“Think of literary fiction as a meal with intricate scents, flavors, and textures that you can’t recognize unless you chew with your eyes closed.”

— Jessica Bell

“To a degree, literary taste is a subjective matter. One can admire a work of fiction without particularly enjoying it; one can dislike a…

— Claire Messud

There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.

— Henry James

“I had never known the pleasure of reading, of exploring the recesses of the soul, of letting myself be carried away by imagination, beauty,…

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Great literature rattles the mind and makes the body sing. It's an unmistakable, electric feeling, and too rare. That is what I want.

— C.E. Morgan

“Enjoyment of literature is achieved only by reading without expectation but with anticipation.”

— David McDonald

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

— Gaston Bachelard

Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.

— Oliver Goldsmith

The love of novels is the preference of sentiment to the senses.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Aesthetic criticism returns us to the autonomy of imaginative literature and the sovereignty of the solitary soul, the reader not as a person in…

— Harold Bloom