“The greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion. The principal enemies of human happiness are inordinate desire—the fantasy of attaining something that exceeds what the finite mortal world allows—and gnawing fear. Even the dreaded plague, in Lucretius’… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
“Eve is a figure for the soul that each human should love. The commandment to be fruitful and multiply did not originally refer to… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
I believe that nothing comes of nothing, even in Shakespeare. I wanted to know where he got the matter he was working with and… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
I think the writing of literature should give pleasure. What else should it be about? It is not nuclear physics. It actually has to… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
There's a huge amount of work on Adam and Eve, from the ancient world to the present. Saint Augustine was obsessed with them.I don't… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
I'm not spitting in my own soup, I love having spent my life thinking about these things-but you don't have to know anything about… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
“The quintessential emblem of religion and the clearest manifestation of the perversity that lies at its core is the sacrifice of a… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity. — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
“you needed only to comprehend that there is a hidden natural explanation for everything that alarms or eludes you. That explanation will inevitably lead… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
A couple of years ago I picked up New Yorker writer Alma Guillermoprieto's "The Heart That Bleeds," which is reportage from Latin America in… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
“I am committed by trade to urging people to attend carefully to the verbal surfaces of what they read. Much of the pleasure and… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
Art always penetrates the particular fissures in one's psychic life. — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
When I was quite young I came across a collection of [Franz] Kafka stories and read "The Judgment." I was just floored by that… — Stephen Greenblatt Copy Share Image
![“When I was quite young I came across a collection of [Franz] Kafka stories and read "The Judgment." I was just floored by that story. I couldn't understand it. I still don't. I'm talking about something I read more than 50 years ago. That story left a little scar on me.” quote by Stephen Greenblatt](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/550/stephen-greenblatt-10786_collections_when-i-was-quite-young-i-came-across-a-c_701892.jpg)