214 Quotes About Literary-criticism

If someone's personhood is in doubt (or seen as lacking), all the easier to direct death wishes at them. When a tiny minority of them transgresses, their crimes of violence only confirm their abjection from the human [. . .] Anxiety, threat, dread, fear, and prejudice feed into the explanatory mechanisms that construct them as somehow beyond human, beyond mercy.

...mangt et Skuespill fortiener ikke Navn af Skuespill, endskiønt alle Logiske Regler derved ere i Agt tagne.

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it.

Several times he had to flatten himself against the shelves as a thesaurus thundered by. He waited patiently as a herd of Critters crawled past, grazing on the contents of the choicer books and leaving behind them piles of small slim volumes of literary criticism.

What are American dry-goods? asked the duchess, raising her large hands in wonder and accentuating the verb.American novels, answered Lord Henry.

Le opere postume hanno lo squisito vantaggio di risparmiarti le scemenze o le perfidie di coloro che senza saper scrivere e neanche concepire un romanzo pretendono di giudicare anzi bistrattare chi lo concepisce e lo scrive.

That book of [Melancthon], to my mind, deserves not merely to live as long as books are read, but to take its place in the Church canon; whereas your book, by comparison, struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I thought it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.

To deprive the derelicts of hope is right, and to sustain them in their illusory "pipe dreams" is right also.