Author Dr S Padmapriya

 *Quotable Literary Quotes*     *Ben Johnson*     'To judge of Poets is only the faculty of Poets and not of all Poets but the best.'  *Milton*    'Incessantly, and to us reading brings not,   A spirit and judgement equal or superior.   Uncertain and unsettled still remains,   Deep-versed in book and shallow in  himself,   Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys,   And trifles for joyous matters, worth a sponge,    As children gathering pebbles on the shore.'  *Robert Browning*  'Ah but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's Heaven for?'  *From Boswell's 'Life of Johnson'*  'Sir, what is poetry?' 'Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what is not. We all know what light is;  but it is not easy to tell what it is.'  *T.S.Eliot*    'The end of all our exploring,    Will be to arrive where we started,    And know the place for the first t...

 *Interesting Literary Bites*  1. 'Battology' means unnecessary repetition in speech or writing. 2. The first recipient of the Jnanpith award was Mahakavi. G.Shankara Kurup. 3. The famous rhyme, 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' was written by Jane Taylor. 4. Mahabharata, the sanskrit epic by Veda Vyasa is considered to be the world's longest epic. 5. Geoffrey Chaucer is known as the father of English Poetry.

 *Leo Tolstoy*  Leo Tolstoy was a great writer from Russia. He was born in an aristocratic family and had a luxurious lifestyle. Nobody had an inkling that he would turn out to be such a famous writer.    Leo joined the Russian army when he was twenty three years old. It was during his days as a soldier that he began to write his diary. His first short story to be published was 'Childhood'. The story was well received. His next short story to be published was 'The Raid'.  He later wrote 'Sebastopol Sketches', which was a vivid description of the war days at Sebastopol in Crimea. Soon, he began to work on his novel, 'The Cossacks'. He later produced his Magnum opus, 'War and Peace' between 1864 and 1869. He wrote another novel called 'Anna Karenina', which was finished in 1877. In 1884, he wrote the famous book, 'The Confessions'.     Tolstoy was not just a writer but a great Thinker. He requestioned his own ideas about 'Truth...