The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.

The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

Education is the state-controlled manufacture of echoes.

Education is the state-controlled manufacture of echoes.

Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations read more

Author: A fool, who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on tormenting the generations to come.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Literary Men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

Literary Men are . . . a perpetual priesthood.

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?Since sorrow never comes too late,And happiness too swiftly flies.Thought would destroy their read more

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?Since sorrow never comes too late,And happiness too swiftly flies.Thought would destroy their paradise.No more; where ignorance is bliss,'Tis folly to be wise. - Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.

Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national read more

Just as it is true that a stream cannot rise above its source, so it is true that a national literature cannot rise above the moral level of the social conditions of the people from whom it derives its inspiration.

I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should
stand by itself, of itself, and for read more

I made a compact with myself that in my person literature should
stand by itself, of itself, and for itself.