Famous Quotes - Tags - Literary Critic

  • A man who means to think and write a great deal must, after six and twenty, learn to read with... More
  • A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there... More
  • A revolution is not the overturning of a cart, a reshuffling in the cards of state. It is a... More
  • Aristotle illustrates his view of the relation of metaphor to simile as follows. “When the poet... More
  • Between religion’s “this is” and poetry’s “but suppose this is,” there must always be... More
  • But the golden-rod is one of the fairy, magical flowers; it grows not up to seek human love amid... More
  • Comedy deflates the sense precisely so that the underlying lubricity and malice may bubble to the... More
  • Culture’s essential service to a religion is to destroy intellectual idolatry, the recurrent... More
  • Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what... More
  • During depression the world disappears. Language itself. One has nothing to say. Nothing. No... More
  • Fashion is like the ashes left behind by the uniquely shaped flames of the fire, the trace alone... More
  • For it does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there... More
  • For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life. More
  • Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering- pot... More
  • Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality. But finding this... More
  • How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little. More
  • I am absurdly fearful about this voyage. Various little omens have combined to give me a dark... More
  • I believe there’s a killer in all of us. I know there’s one inside me. When you know the... More
  • I myself am more divine than any I see— More
  • I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike—and I don’t think there... More
  • I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are... More
  • In fact, the mental hygiene code, modeled originally upon the criminal code, binds the afflicted... More
  • In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright... More
  • Indeed the involuntary character of psychiatric treatment is at odds with the spirit and ethics... More
  • It is an insult to God to believe in God. For on the one hand it is to suppose that he has... More
  • It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive... More
  • It is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally... More
  • It may be that a second wave of the sexual revolution might at last accomplish its aim of freeing... More
  • It would appear that love is dead. Or very likely in a bad way. More
  • Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of... More
  • Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’.... More
  • Literature ... is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently,... More
  • Literature exists at the same time in the modes of error and truth; it both betrays and obeys its... More
  • Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience; and casts... More
  • Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards ... More
  • Metaphors are much more tenacious than facts. More
  • Miller’s sexual humor is the humor of the men’s house, more specifically, the men’s room. More
  • Modernity exists in the form of a desire to wipe out whatever came earlier, in the hope of... More
  • Nature is inside art as its content, not outside as its model. More
  • Only what is rare is valuable.
    Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing... More
  • Politics is repetition. It is not change. Change is something beyond what we call politics.... More
  • Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time; then it loses... More
  • Professors of literature, who for the most part are genteel but mediocre men, can make but a poor... More
  • Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the... More
  • Stupid misery of fame and money. Always we were safe from it, mistaking our obscurity for a curse... More
  • The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive... More
  • The bases for historical knowledge are not empirical facts but written texts, even if these texts... More
  • The cliché that women, more consistently than men, turn inward for sustenance seems to mean, in... More
  • The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear—and even, in certain respects,... More
  • The enormous social change involved in a sexual revolution is basically a matter of altered... More
  • The entire construct of the “medical model” of “mental illness”Mwhat is it but an... More
  • The essential difference between novel and romance lies in the conception of characterization.... More
  • The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the... More
  • The pursuit of beauty is much more dangerous nonsense than the pursuit of truth or goodness,... More
  • The revolution as we call it is not necessarily an uprising in the streets or the old business of... More
  • The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work. More
  • The vanity of men, a constant insult to women, is also the ground for the implicit feminine claim... More
  • The whole bloody system is sick: the very notion of leadership, a balloon with a face painted... More
  • The writer’s language is to some degree the product of his own action; he is both the historian... More
  • This was one of the rye-bread days, all dull and damp without. More
  • Tragedy is always a mistake; and the loneliness of the deepest thinker, the widest lover, ceases... More
  • We are naïve and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find politics a blight upon the... More
  • We are women. We are a subject people who have inherited an alien culture. More
  • We doubt not the destiny of our country—that she is to accomplish great things for human... More
  • We need to hear the excuses men make to themselves for their worthlessness. More
  • Were the destiny of woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a... More
  • What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly... More
  • What side of American life is not touched by this antithesis? What explanation of American life... More
  • With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with... More
  • You may well ask how I expect to assert my privacy by resorting to the outrageous publicity of... More
  • [Madness] is the jail we could all end up in. And we know it. And watch our step. For a lifetime.... More

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