Famous Quotes in English Literature

• "A little learning is a dangerous thing" is from Alexander Pope

• "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" is by John Keats

• "All at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils" is by Wordsworth

• "Alone, alone, all, all alone" is from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• Aristotle: "By nature man is a political animal"

• "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" comes from Ode on a Grecian Urn

• Shakespeare stated, "Better three hours too soon than a minute too late"

• Satan in Paradise Lost: "Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven"

• W. Wordsworth: "Child is the father of man"

• Julius Caesar: "Cowards die many times before their death"

• Abraham Lincoln: "Democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people"

• Nelson: "England expects every man to do his duty"

• John Donne: "For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love"

• W. Shakespeare: "Frailty, thy name is woman"

• Queen Elizabeth: "Good face is the best letter of recommendation"

• S.T. Coleridge: "He prayeth best who loveth best"

• Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it"

• Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind": "If winter comes, can spring be far behind"

• Martin Luther King: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"

• Gladstone: "Justice delayed is justice denied"

• Socrates: "Know thyself"

• Hobbes: "Knowledge is power"

• Wordsworth: "Nature never did betray the heart that loved her"

• P. B. Shelly: "Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought"

• Shelley: "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world"

• Lord Acton: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

• Francis Bacon: "Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed; and some few to be chewed and digested"

• Shakespeare: "Sweet are the uses of adversity"

• Wordsworth: "Ten thousand saw I at a glance"

• This is an example of hyperbole, a figure of speech

• Cicero: "The good of the people is the chief law"

• Henry David Thoreau: "The government is best which governs least"

• "The last word of the proverb ‘Justice delayed is justice’ is denied."

• Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy"

• Hamlet: "There is a divinity that shapes our ends"

• "To be or not to be" begins a famous soliloquy from Hamlet

• "To be, or not to be; that is the question" is from Hamlet

• Pope: "To err is human, to forgive is divine"

• Shakespeare: "Veni, Vidi, Vici"

• The Ancient Mariner: "Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink"

• Shakespeare: "We find the utterance ‘Frailty, thy name is women'"

• Thomas Gray: "Where ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise"

• Rousseau: "Who said ‘Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains’?"

• Aristotle: "Who said 'Man is a political animal'?"

• Keats: "Who wrote ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’?"

• Shakespeare: "Who wrote 'Cowards die many times before their death'?"

• Abraham Lincoln: "You may fool some of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time"

Literary Terms

• Alliteration: Repetition of the same initial sound, especially consonant sounds. Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled pepper.
• Ballad: A short narrative poem/song which tells a story. Example: S.T. Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Blank Verse: Poetry written in iambic pentameter with no rhyme
• Catastrophe: Tragic conclusion/final event of a tragedy
• Climax: Point of story with greatest intensity, interest, or suspense. Readers wonder what will happen and if conflict will resolve
• Dialogue: Conversation between characters in a book, play, or film/movie
• Dramatic Monologue: A poem where a single speaker speaks to silent listener/listeners
• Elegy: Song of lamentation
• Epic: A long poem
• Epilogue: A poem or speech at end of a play
• Epitaph: Words said about a dead person
• Eulogy: Speech/writing to praise a person
• Euphemism: Inoffensive expression
• Fairy Tale: Folk literature
• Genre: Classification of literature, such as drama, novel, poem, or short story
• Hyperbole: An exaggerated statement
• Irony: Deliberate use of words with literal meaning opposite of intended meaning
• Limerick: Humorous poem with five lines
• Lyric: Short narrative poem that expresses personal thoughts/intense feeling
• Machiavellian Character: Selfish person with violent character
• Metaphor: Word/phrase describes something in a way that is different than normal
• Monologue: Long speech in play delivered by one actor to the audience alone
• Myth: Ancient story about gods/goddesses and mysterious activities
• Mythology: Collection of myths (Example: Greek/Roman mythology)
• Ode: Lyric poem, often in the form of an address
• Play: Piece of writing performed by actors in a theater, on television, or radio
• Plot: Series of events that form a story in a play, novel, film/movie, etc
• Poetry: General form of literature; collection of poems
• Prologue: Introduction of a play/literary work
• Protagonist: Central figure of drama (may be hero, heroine, or villain)
• Rhyme: Short poem with same sound
• Satire: Literary attack on stupidity/vices of person/society with intent to correct through humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule
• Simile: Similarity between two things is directly expressed
• Sonnet: Lyric poem of 14 iambic pentameter lines, each line containing five feet
• Stanza: Division of a poem
• Thrillers: Sensational stories
• Tragedy: Serious play with sad ending, where main character dies

Periods of English Literature

• The Renaissance Period (1500-1660)
• Preparation for Renaissance (1500-1558)
• The Romantic Period (1798-1832)
• The Victorian Period (1832-1901)
• Elizabethan Period/Golden Age (1558-1603)
• Jacobean Age (1603-1625)
• Caroline Age (1625-1649)
• Shakespearean Age (1590-1616)
• Commonwealth Period (1649-1660)
• Puritan Period (1620-1660)
• The Pre-Raphaelites (1848-1860)
• Aestheticism and Decadence (1880-1901)
• Modern Period (1901-1939)
• Edwardian Period (1901-1910)
• Gregorian Period (1910-1936)
• Post-Modern Period (1939-Present)

Major Writers and Works Based on Literary Age

• Middle English Period (1066-1500): Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) wrote The Canterbury Tales
• Chaucer is considered the Father of English Literature and Father of English Poetry/Poem
• Elizabethan Age (1558-1603): Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) wrote Utopia
• Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), the Poet of Poets, wrote The Faerie Queen and The Ruins of Time
• Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the Father of English essays/prose, wrote Of Studies, Of Great Place, Of Marriage and Single Life
• Also known as Lord Vereclum, English Philosopher and Statements
• Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), wrote Doctor Faustus (The tragical History of Doctor Faustus) and The Jew of Malta
• He was the greatest playwright before Shakespeare, University wit
• William Shakespeare (1564-1616): National poet of England with the nickname Swan of Avon
• Title: the Bard of Avon and considered the greatest writer in English and greatest dramatist of all time and greatest superstar of the world
• He wrote 37 plays and 154 sonnets
• Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as greatest dramatist
• Shakespeare wrote comedies such as All's Well that Ends Well, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, The Taming of the Shrew, Cymbeline, Twelfth Night and Measure for Measure
• Shakespeare wrote tragedies: Hamlet, Julius Caesar, King Lear, Macbeth, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Titus Andronicus
• Shakespeare wrote historical plays such as King John, Richard II, Richard III, Henry V, Henry VIII
• Jacobean Age (1603-1625): Ben Jonson (1573-1637) wrote The Alchemist, The Silent Woman, and Volpone
• First English Poet Laureate
• Caroline Age (1625-1649): John Milton (1608-1674) wrote, Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained (epic), Lycidas, Samson Agonistes, Comus, On Shakespeare
• He was an epic poet and Great Master of Verse
• Commonwealth Age (1649-1660): Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) wrote Leviathan
• Neo-Classical Period (1660-1798): Included the Restoration Period (1660-1700)
• The Augustan Age (1702-1745): Daniel Defoe (1659-1731) wrote Robinson Crusoe
• Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) wrote Gulliver's Travels, A Tale of Tub, The battle of the books
• Alexander Pope (1688-1744) wrote The Rape of the Lock and An Essay on Criticism
• Known as the Greatest of Augustan Age and a mock heroic poet
• (The Age of Sensibility (1745-1785), Age of Johnson: Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
• Pen Name: Dr. Johnson
• Father of English dictionary
• Romantic Period (1798-1832): William Wordsworth (1770-1850) wrote Lyrical Ballads (1798) containing the The Daffodils and The Solitary Reaper
• He was inspired by French Revolution and known as the Poet of nature, Lake Poet philosopher and theologian France Revolution
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote Kubla Khan, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and Biographia literaria
• He was a Lake Poet, English poet, Literary Critic
• William Blake (1757-1827) wrote Songs of Innocence and of Experience
• He was an English artist/painter, poet, and Print Maker, and known for famous poems Jerusalem,The Tyger
• P.B. Shelley (1792-1822) wrote Adonais, Prometheus Unbound, The Revolt of Islam, Ode to a Skylark, Ode to the West Wind
• He was an atheist and anarchist
• John Keats (1795-1821) wrote Ode to A Nightingale, Ode to Autumn, Ode to Psyche, and Ode on A Grecian Urn
• Poet of Beauty/sensuousness, Romantic Poet
• Lord Byron (1788-1824) wrote Poems: Don Juan, Heaven and Earth, Prometheus, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, The Vision of Judgement, Hours of Idleness Mazeppa, Cain, The Two Foscare, Manfred etc
• Rebel Poet, Politician, English Peer
• Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote Novels: Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion
• She was an English novelist
• Victorian Period (1832-1901): Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) wrote In Memoriam (elegy), Ulysses, The Lotus Eaters
• He was made Poet Laureate in 1850 and made a baron in 1884
• Charles Dickens (1812-1870) wrote Novels: Pickwick Papers, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations
• A great English novelist
• Robert Browning (1812-1889) wrote The Patriot, Dramatic Lyrics, Men and Women
• He excels in dramatic monologue
• William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) wrote Vanity Fair (historical novel)
• Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) wrote Poems: The Scholar- Gypsy and Westminster Abbey
• Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote The Return of the Native
• George Eliot (1819-1880) wrote Adam Bede and Daniel Deronda
• Real name: Mary Ann Evans
• Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-94) wrote The New Arabian Nights
• Modern Period (1901-1939) & The Post-modern Period (1939-Present): George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) wrote Arms and the man, Man and Superman, and Candida
• He was the Father of modern English Literature and only winner of Nobel Prize & Oscar
• William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) wrote Poems: The Second Coming, The lake isle of Innisfree, A Prayer for My Daughter
• a Famous Irish poet and dramatist
• He wrote introduction for Gitanjali and was a Senator of Irish parliament.
• He got Nobel Prize in 1923
• Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) wrote Kim (novel) and The Jungle Book
• first English writer to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907
• Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) wrote Poems: The Waste Land
• born in the USA, his literary collaborator was Ezra pound
• Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), a British philosopher, wrote Marriage and Morals. Recipient of Nobel Prize in literature in 1950
• Winston Churchill (1874-1965) wrote History of the Second World War and was a statesman, Nobel prize winner, 1953
• Edward Morgan Forster (1879-1970) wrote A Passage to India
• James Joyce (1882-1941) wrote Ulysses
• William Somerset Maugham (1874-1935) wrote Novels: Of Human Bondage, The Magician Short stories: The Launcheon
• an English novelist, playwright, and short story writer
• David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930) wrote Novels: Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterly's Lover, The Rainbow, Women in Love, The White Peacock
• Ted Hughes (1930-19980 wrote Daffodils
• O'Henry/William Sydney Porter (1862-1910) wrote The Gift of the Magi
• Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) wrote The Time Machine and The Invisible Man
• He was the Father of English Science fiction
• George Orwell (1903-1950) Wrote Animal Farms (novel) and Nineteen Eighty Four (novel)
• He worked in British Police in Burma
• John Millington Synge (1871-1909) wrote Riders to the Sea
• an Irish playwright
• Samuel Becket (1906-1989) wrote Waiting for Godot (absurd drama)
• Irish, got Nobel Prize in 1969

Literary Figures and Their Titles

• Alexander Pope: Mock Heroic Poet
• Alfred the Great: Founder
• Ben Jonson: Father of Comedy of Humours
• Caedmon: First/Earliest English poet
• Christopher Marlowe: Father of English Tragedy
• Edgar Allan Poe: Father of English short Story & Father of (Modern) Detective story
• Edmund Spenser: Poet of Poets
• Francis Bacon: Father of English essay
• Geoffrey Chaucer: Father of English Literature & Father of (modern) English Poetry/Poem
• George Bernard Shaw: Father of modern English Literature & the greatest modern English Dramatist
• John Donne: Founder of Metaphysical poetry/Poet of Love
• John Keats: Poet of Beauty, Romantic Poet & Poet of sensuousness
• John Milton: Epic poet/Great Master of verse
• John Wycliffe, Tyndale, Francis Bacon: Father of English Prose
• Jonathan Swift: One of the most famous satirists in English literature
• Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron): Rebel Poet, National Hero of Greek
• Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poet of Skylark and Winds & Revolutionary Romantic poet
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poet of supernaturalism
• Sir Thomas Wyatt: Father of English Sonnet
• William Shakespeare: The greatest dramatist of all time & the greatest writer in the English language
• William Wordsworth: Poet of Nature, Lake Poet

Authors and Important Characters of Some Literary Pieces

• Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus: Doctor Faustus
• Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe: Robinson Crusoe
• E.M. Forster's A Passage to India: Characters not listed

List of Literary Works and Authors

• G.B. Shaw's Arms and the Man: Achilles, Hector, Helen
• Homer's The lliad (Epic): No characters listed
• John Milton's Paradise Lost (Epic): No characters listed
• William Shakespeare's Hamlet: No characters listed
• William Shakespeare King Lear (Play, tragedy): No characters listed
• William Shakespeare's Macbeth: No characters listed
• William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (Play, tragi-comedy): No characters listed
• William Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice (Play): No characters listed
• William Shakespeare's Othello (Play, tragedy): No characters listed
• William Shakespeare's The Tempest: No characters listed
• William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (Play): No characters listed

Pen Name and Real Name

• George Eliot: Marry Ann Evans
• J.K. Rowling: Joanne Rowling
• Voltaire: Francois-Marie-Arouet
• O Henry : William Sydney Porter

Elegy and Writer

• Adonais: P.B. Shelly and about John Keats
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: Thomas Gray about the forefathers
• In Memoriam: Alfred Lord Tennyson about his friend Arthur Henry Hallam
• Lycidas: John Milton about his friend Edward King

At A Glance

• Father of English Novel: Henry Fielding
• Father of English Poem: Geoffrey Chaucer
• Poet of Poet: Edmund Spenser
• Famous Mock-Heroic Poet in English: Alexander Pope
• English 'Epic' Poet: John Milton

Literary Titles and Authors

• Both a Poet and Painter: Blake
• Poet of Nature in English Literature: William Wordsworth
• Poet of Beauty in English Literature: John Keats
• Rebel Poet in English Literature: Lord Byron
• Poet of Skylark and Wind: P.B. Shelley
• Father of Modern English Literature: G.B Shaw
• Most Translated Author of the World: V.I. Lenin
• Father of English Learning/ History: Venerable Bede
• The founder of English Prose: Alfred the Great
• Father of English Prose: John Wycliff
• First Sonneteer in English Literature: Sir Thomas Wyatt
• Father of English Tragedy: Christopher Marlowe
• Bard of Avon/ Father of English Drama: William Shakespeare
• Father of English Essay/ Master of Aphorism & Terseness: Francis Bacon
• Father of English Comedy/ A Neo-Classicist: Ben Jonson
• Poet of Love/ Metaphysical Poet/ Father of Metaphysical Poetry: John Donne
• Father of English Criticism/First Poet Laureate: John Dryden
• Master of English Satire: Jonathon Swift
• The Compiler of First English Dictionary/ Father of English One Act Play: Samuel Johnson
• Fathers of Romanticism: Coleridge & Wordsworth
• Poet of Nature/ Lake Poet/ Poet of Children: William Wordsworth
• Poet of Supernaturalism/ Opium Eater/ Lake Poet: S.T. Coleridge
• Revolutionary Poet/ Poet of Hope & Regeneration: P.B Shelley
• Poet of Beauty/ Poet of Sensuousness: John Keats
• Anti-romantic in Romantic Age: Jane Austen
• A representative Poet of the Victorian Period: Tennyson
• Father of Dramatic Monologue: Robert Browning
• The Greatest Modern Dramatist: G.B. Shaw
• Father of Revenge Tragedy: Thomas Kyd
• First English comedy Writer: Nicholas Udall
• Writer of the First English Tragedy: Norton and Sackville
• Father of Modern Drama: Henrik Ibsen
• Father of Science Fiction: Jules Verne
• Father of English Stream of Conscious Novel: James Joyce
• Father of English Short Story: Edger Allen Poe
• First Novel Prize Winner in Literature: Sully Prudhomme
• A Great Psycho-Analysist: Sigmund Freud
• The Best Writer of English Travelogue: R. L Stevenson

List of books and authors

• A Banker to the Poor by Dr. M. Younus, Type: not listed
• A Brief History of Time/The Grand design/The Theory of Everything by Stephen Hawking, Type: Novel
• A Farwell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, Type: Novel
• A Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mendela, Type: Autobiography
• A passage to English by Nirad C. Chowdhury, Type: Novel
• A passage to India by E. M. Foster, Type: Novel
• Al Mukaddima by Ibn Khaldun, Type: not listed
• Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw, Type: Play
• Animal Farm by George Orwell, Type: Novel
• Arms and the man by G B. Shaw, Type: Play
• As You Like It by W. Shakespeare, Type: Comedy
• Audacity of Hope/ Dreams from My Father/ Change You Can Believe On by Barak Obama, Type: Novel
• Beowulf by unknown, Type: Great Epic
• Caesar and Cleopatra by G. B. Shaw, Type: Play
• Candida by G. B. Shaw, Type: Play
• Canterbury Tales by G Chaucer, Type: Collection of Tales
• Clash of Civilization by Samuel Hantington, Type: not listed
• Comedy of Errors by W. Shakespeare, Type: Comedy
• Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Engels, Type: Political Essay
• Das Kapital by Karl Marx, Type: Theory
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens, Type: Novel
• Divine Comedy by Dante, Type: Political Work
• Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe, Type: Tragedy
• Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, Type: Epic
• For Whom the Bells Toll by Ernest Hemingway, Type: Novel
• Good Earth by Pearl. S. Buck, Type: Novel
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Type: Novel
• Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift, Type: Novel
• Hamlet by W. Shakespeare, Type: Tragedy
• lliad by Homer, Type: Epic
• In Memoriam by Alfred Tennyson, Type: Verse
• Invisible Man by H. G Wells, Type: not listed
• Isabella by John Keats, Type: Long verse
• Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Type: Tragedy
• Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, Type: Fairy Tale
• Kubla Khan by S. T. Coleridge, Type: Poem
• La Divine Comedia by A. Dante, Type: Verse
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Type: Novel
• Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, Type: Essay
• Lycidas by P. B. Shelley, Type: Verse
• Man and Superman by G B. Shaw, Type: Play
• Marriage and Morals/ Road to Freedom by Bertrand Russell, Type: not listed
• Mein Kemph by Adolf Hitler, Type: not listed
• Memories of the Second World War by W. Churchill, Type: Autobiography
• Merchant of Venice by W. Shakespeare, Type: Comedy
• Paradise Lost by John Milton, Type: Epic
• Paradise Regained by John Milton, Type: Epic
• Poverty and Femine/The Idea of justice by Amartya Sen, Type: Eassy
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, Type: Novel
• Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, Type: Mock Epic
• Republic/Dialogue by Plato, Type: Philosophical Essay
• Return of the Native by T. Hardy, Type: Novel
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner by S. T. Coleridge, Type: Poem
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Type: Novel
• Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, Type: Novel
• Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, Type: Novel
• Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, Type: Tragedy
• Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Type: Novel
• The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, Type: not listed
• The Mother by Maxim Gorky
• The Prince by Machiavelli, Type: Political Science
• The Social Contact by Russeau, Type: Eassy
• The Tempest by W. Shakespeare, Type: Drama 1
• The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot,Type: Novel
• The White Tiger by Arubindah Artiga, Type: Novel
• Time Machine by H. G. wells, Type: Novel
• The White Tiger by Arabindah Adiga, Type: Novel
• Time Machine by H. G. Wells, Type: Science Fiction
• Twelfth Night by W. Shakespeare, Type: Comedy
• Utopia by Thomas More, Type: Novel
• Vanity Fair by William Thackeray, Type: Novel
• Volpone by Ben Jonson, Type: Comedy
• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Type: Novel

Explore famous quotes from renowned authors like Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and others. Understand the context and significance of these literary excerpts. Discover memorable lines and their impact on literature and culture.