In the learned journal, in the influential newspaper, I discern no form; only some irresponsible shadow; oftener some monied corpo...ration, or some dangler, who hopes, in the mask and robes of his paragraph, to pass for somebody. But through every clause and part of speech of the right book I meet the eyes of the most determined men; his force and terror inundate every word: the commas and dashes are alive; so that the writing is athletic and nimble,--can go far and live long.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticizing. C...riticism can never be a science: it is, in the first place, much too personal, and in the second, it is concerned with values that science ignores. The touchstone is emotion, not reason. We judge a work of art by its effect on our sincere and vital emotion, and nothing else. All the critical twiddle-twaddle about style and form, all this pseudoscientific classifying and analysing of books in an imitation-botanical fashion, is mere impertinence and mostly dull jargon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What these perplexities of my uncle Toby were,--'tis impossible for you to guess;Mif you could,--I should blush ... as an author; ...inasmuch as I set no small store by myself upon this very account, that my reader has never yet been able to guess at any thing. And ... if I thought you was able to form the least ... conjecture to yourself, of what was to come in the next page,--I would tear it out of my book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the crit...ic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All neighbourly content and easy talk are gone, But there's no good complaining, for money's rant is on,... He that's mounting up must on his neighbour mount And we and all the Muses are things of no account. They have schooling of their own but I pass their schooling by, What can they know that we know that know the time to die?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Writing a book I have found to be like building a house. A man forms a plan, and collects materials. He thinks he has enough to ra...ise a large and stately edifice; but after he has arranged, compacted and polished, his work turns out to be a very small performance. The authour however like the builder, knows how much labour his work has cost him; and therefore estimates it at a higher rate than other people think it deserves,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He could foretell whats'ever was By consequence to come to pass.... As Death of Great Men, Alterations, Diseases, Battels, Inundations. All this without th' Eclipse of Sun, Or dreadful Comet, he hath done By inward Light, a way as good,LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »