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Pragmatically, aesthetic value can be recognized or experienced, but it cannot be conveyed to those who are incapable of grasping its sensations and p...more

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There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in whic...more

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There is no God but God, and his name is William Shakespeare.

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Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.

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The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is ...more

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Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it, is in the first place 'literary', which is to say personal and passionate. It is not philosophy, poli...more

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Lawrence will go on burying his own undertakers.

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Greatness recognizes greatness, and is shadowed by it.

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We are destroying all esthetic standards in the name of social justice.

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The inventor knows HOW to borrow.

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When critics surrender to the prevailing orthodoxy, the author says they adopt the rhetoric of an occupied country, "one that expects no liberation fr...more

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Great writing is always rewriting or revisionism, and is founded on a reading that clears space for the self.

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Emily Dickinson sublimely unnames even the blanks.

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A poem, novel, or play acquires all of humanity's disorders, including the fear of mortality

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Originality must compound with inheritance.