All M H Abrams Quotes
- If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem. Body
- 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… Ability
- When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas. Graduate
- 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… Appeal
- It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable. Age
- The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves. Bible
- John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student. Always Fun
- The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives. Artistic
- Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading. Book
- Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions. Determine
- If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false. All
- We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity. Human
- 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… Broadens
- 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… Complain
- Life without literature is a life reduced to penury. Book
- I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected. Been
- 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… Changeable
- At first, students tend to freeze at the first effort. The breakthrough comes when they realize that they can make it better - can identify… Achieve
- If you don't set your writing - teaching - at a level that makes them stretch, they are never going to develop their intellectual muscle. Develop
- 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… Ability