Quotes by M. H. Abrams - Page 1

Life without literature is a life reduced to penury.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Book
Literature
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Jews had an outsider's eye on a lot of Western tradition.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Western
Jews
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Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Book
Easier
Hard Work
Reading
Work Hard Work Easy
Easy Reading
Work Easy Hard
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We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Humanity
Humans
Interesting
Nothing Human More
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Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Determine
Keys
Perceive
Perception
Thinking
Metaphors
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If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Poetry
Body
Mean
Read
Means
Missed
Poem
Quickly
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When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Funny
Graduation
Inspirational
Harvard
Ideas
Interested
Student
Graduate
Graduate Student
Leading
Spirits
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I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Desperation
Has Beens
Thinking
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John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Former
Fun
Students
Bloom
Student
Harold
John
Tom
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It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Age
Amazing
Country
Incomparable
Language
After
Languages
How
Emerges
Shakespeare
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If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Decades
Predictions
Views
False
Necessarily
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The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Bible
Biblical
Enlightenment
Philosopher
Secular
Spite
Theological
Philosophers
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If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Intellectual
Teaching
Writing
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The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Humanity
Long
Survival
Identify
Modes
Recognize
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The Romantics were whipping boys of the New Criticism, but they appealed to me anyway. I was recalcitrant. It was clear to me that they had thought innovatively.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Clear
Criticism
Whipping
Anyway
Appealed
Romantics
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The first test any poem must pass is no longer, 'Is it true to nature?' but a criterion looking in a different direction: namely, 'Is it sincere? Is it genuine?'
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Genuine
Sincere
Criterion
Namely
Poem
Test
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When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Fashion
Heyday
People
Thinking
People Will New
Complain
Effect
People New Young
Passed
Seize
Young People
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At first, students tend to freeze at the first effort. The breakthrough comes when they realize that they can make it better - can identify what their purposes were and realize better ways to achieve those purposes.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Effort
Purpose
Teaching
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We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and invented selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Communication
Military
Noisy
Personnel
Selection
Tests
Voice
Background
Established
Codes
Communications
Highly
Invented
Recognize
Solving
Superior
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We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing — by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Focus
Humanity
Interesting
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I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable. It's not the final thing, it's the first thing, which may just be the suggestive, vague identification of something that you have to come back to and rewrite.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Editing
Finals
Thinking
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Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. It expands you in every way. It illuminates what you’re doing. It shows you possibilities you haven’t thought of. It enables you to live the lives of other people than yourself. It broadens you, it makes you more human. It makes life enjoyable.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Enjoy Life
Literature
People
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Secular thinkers have no more been able to work free of the centuries-old Judeo-Christian culture than Christian theologians were able to work free of their inheritance of classical and pagan thought. The process... has not been the deletion and replacement of religious ideas but rather the assimilation and reinterpretation of religious ideas.
M. H. Abrams / Literary Critic
Assimilation
Christian
Ideas
Inheritance
Pagan
Process
Secular
Classical
Replacement
Theologians
Thinkers
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M. H. Abrams Quotes - Page 1

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