M. H. Abrams

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#body #get #means #missed #poem

If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#decades #false #having #learn #lived

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#humanity #interesting #more #nothing #than

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

#comes #complain #continue #effect #especially

Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#easy #easy reading #hard #hard work #least

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#after #age #country #emerges #how

John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#another #bloom #former #fun #harold

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#determine #help #how #key #metaphors

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

#humanity #identify #long #modes #ourselves

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#century #enlightenment #major #philosophers #secular