All That A Critic, As Critic, Can

Unless You Have Read And Absorbed The Best That Can Be Read And Absorbed, You Will Not Think Clearly Or Well.

We Read, Frequently If Not Unknowingly, In Search Of A Mind More Original Than Our Own.

... One Doesn't Want To Read Badly Any More Than Live Badly, Since Time Will Not Relent. I Don't Know That We Owe God Or Nature A Death, But Nature Will Collect Anyway, And We Certainly Owe Mediocrity Nothing, Whatever Collectivity It Purports To Advance Or At Least Represent.

Criticism In The Universities, I'll Have To Admit, Has Entered A Phase Where I Am Totally Out Of Sympathy With 95% Of What Goes On. It's Stalinism Without Stalin.

I Have Never Believed That The Critic Is The Rival Of The Poet, But I Do Believe That Criticism Is A Genre Of Literature Or It Does Not Exist.