Literary Critics

"The critic does not pass judgment on the work; rather, art itself passes judgment, either by taking up the work in the medium of criticism or by rejecting it and thereby appraising it as beneath all criticism."

"Für die Romantiker und für die spekulative Philosophie bedeutete der Terminus kritisch: objektiv produktiv, schöpferisch aus Besonnenheit. Kritisch sein hieß die Erhebung des Denkens über alle Bindungen so weit treiben, daß gleichsam zauberisch aus der Einsicht in das Falsche der Bindungen die Erkenntnis der Wahrheit sich schwang."

"Everyone who achieves strives for totality, and the value of his achievement lies in that totality—that is, in the fact that the whole, undivided nature of a human being should be expressed in his achievement. But when determined by our society, as we see it today, achievement does not express a totality; it is completely fragmented and derivative. It is not uncommon for the community to be the site where a joint and covert struggle is waged against higher ambitions and more personal goals. ... The socially relevant achievement of the average person serves in the vast majority of cases to repress the original and nonderivative, inner aspirations of the human being."

"The true sign of decadence is not the collusion of the university and the state (something that is by no means incompatible with honest barbarity), but the theory and guarantee of academic freedom, when in reality people assume with brutal simplicity that the aim of study is to steer its disciples to a socially conceived individuality."

"Der Beruf folgt so wenig aus der Wissenschaft, dass sie ihn sogar ausschließen kann. Denn die Wissenschaft duldet ihrem Wesen nach keine Lösung von sich."

"An das Leben der Studenten tritt die Frage nach seiner bewußten Einheit heran. ... Das Auszeichnende im Studentenleben ist in der Tat der Gegenwille, sich einem Prinzip zu unterwerfen, mit der Idee sich zu durchdringen. Der Name der Wissenschaft dient vorzüglich, eine tiefeingesessene, verbürgerte Indifferenz zu verbergen."

"There is no muse of philosophy, nor is there one of translation."

"Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the “authentic” print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice – politics."

"Reminiscences, even extensive ones, do not always amount to an autobiography. … For even if months and years appear here, it is in the form they have in the moment of recollection. This strange form — it may be called fleeting or eternal — is in neither case the stuff that life is made of."

"The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred."

"Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. … Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like."

"Ich packe meine Bibliothek aus ("Unpacking my library", 1931), p. 2"

"… für den wahren Sammler ist die Erwerbung eines alten Buches dessen Wiedergeburt. … Die alte Welt erneuern – das ist der tiefste Trieb im Wunsch des Sammlers, Neues zu erwerben, und darum steht der Sammler älterer Bücher dem Quell des Sammelns näher als der Interessent für bibliophile Neudrucke. translation: … for the true collector, acquiring an old book is its rebirth. … Renewing the old world — this is the deepest drive in the collector's desire to acquire new things, and that is why the collector of older books is closer to the source of collecting than the person interested in bibliophile reprints."

"Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness."

"I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain."

"Zur Verknechtung der Sprache im Geschwätz tritt die Verknechtung der Dinge in der Narretei fast als deren unausbleibliche Folge."

"Jede Äußerung menschlichen Geisteslebens kann als eine Art der Sprache aufgefaßt werden, und diese Auffassung erschließt nach Art einer wahrhaften Methode überall neue Fragestellungen."

"My own personal theory is that this is the very dawn of the world. We're hardly more than an eyeblink away from the fall of Troy, and scarcely an interglaciation removed from the Altamira cave painters. We live in extremely interesting ancient times. I like this idea. It encourages us to be earnest and ingenious and brave, as befits ancestral peoples; but keeps us from deciding that because we don't know all the answers, they must be unknowable and thus unprofitable to pursue."

"I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist."

"It is not my intention to denounce modern education. If it is bad, it may be said that all education is bad which is not self-education, and quite a lot of self-education is going on today — some of it in our schools, under the very noses of the teachers!"

"Famous author (and former newspaperman) Robertson Davies recently gave a reading from his latest novel to a packed library theatre in Calgary. After the reading, he took questions from the audience. One young man asked, "Professor Davies, how can a practicing journalist find time to write fiction?" "Oh dear," Davies replied, "that question shows a great deal of innocence about journalism.""

"I literally never meet anybody who ever talks about God as something other than a kind of big man. I think God is a wondrous spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, but only interested in men as part of a giant creation which is pulsing with life. People say, when a relative dies: "Oh, how could God have taken her away so young and with so much before her?" God doesn't give a bugger about how young she is. He probably isn't noticing particularly. That's just the way a lot of things happen. A lot gets spilled, you know, in nature. When you look at what's going on out there now, those trees are dropping seeds by literally the hundreds of thousands and millions, and one or two of them may take on. I think that that is the way that God functions. He doesn't care nearly as much about individuals and individual fates as we would like to suppose. But by trying to ally ourselves with the totality of things, we may get into Tao as they say in the East and be part of it, really take part in it, and not just regard ourselves as a kind of miraculous creation and the rest just sort of stage scenery against which we perform."

"We are Brigand Philosophers Our hearts are high and cheery, For we know our robbery rests upon A sound economic theory!"

"The brigand's life is a very fine life For men of generous mind; We rob the rich to help the poor And succour oppressed mankind. The rich, dear souls, are close around And it's easy work to skelp 'em; But the poor — damn their eyes — can never be found When we're in the mood to help them."

"Love, though sweet, must know its proper station And never seek to rival education."

"They live and laugh who know the better part — Count length of pleasure not by dial or glass But by the heart; What are our fears When Time's slow footfall, fall, fall Falling Turns lovers' hours to years?"

"He sets a thief to guard his purse Who trusts a dial with his hours Or bids a sand-glass bleed away his nights, His days, his loves, his pleasures and his powers. The burthen of his years Is Time's soft footfall, Time's soft Falling Through his joys and tears."

"He was born into, and seems never to have questioned, that English "class system" which has been so much abused in the present century. Indeed, several governments have announced their intention of abolishing it, and the most recent prime minister to retire showed her egalitarian principles by accepting the title of Baroness Thatcher."

"Those of you who have visited Oxford know what a busy, crowded, noisy place it now is and you might perhaps not guess that it was a university town if it were not that, now and then, the traffic is halted while the Vice-Chancellor, preceded by his two mace-bearers, crosses the street. It must be one of the few places left in the world where self-assertion, covetousness, and the whole world of the combustion engine must come to a halt because somebody distinguished for his intelligence is going about his business."

"Try some Symbolic Logic on your little Couch Potato when you go home, and see what happens."

"Childhood may have periods of great happiness, but it also has times that must simply be endured. Childhood at its best is a form of slavery tempered by affection."

"The really great eccentrics are all inimitable; they are not possessed by a single oddity; they are, in their deepest selves, unlike the generality of mankind."

"Can you tell me the time of the last complete show?" "You have the wrong number." "Eh? Isn't this the Odeon?" I decide to give a Burtonian answer. "No, this is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Good-night."

"The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness."

"But what ailed Little Eva St. Clair, in Uncle Tom's Cabin? What carried off Little Nell?...They have no clear symptoms, and seem to die of Ingrowing Virtue."

"A Library goes on as far as thought can reach."

"The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live."

"Naked anger may sometimes be seen in priests of the Church of Rome, but the Church of England prefers the icy smile, the false bonhomie, the sword concealed in the palm-branch."

"Art is always at peril in universities, where there are so many people, young and old, who love art less than argument, and dote upon a text that provides the nutritious pemmican on which scholars love to chew."

"The ironist is not bitter, he does not seek to undercut everything that seems worthy or serious, he scorns the cheap scoring-off of the wisecracker. He stands, so to speak, somewhat at one side, observes and speaks with a moderation which is occasionally embellished with a flash of controlled exaggeration. He speaks from a certain depth, and thus he is not of the same nature as the wit, who so often speaks from the tongue and no deeper. The wit's desire is to be funny; the ironist is only funny as a secondary achievement."

"When irony first makes itself known in a young man's life, it can be like his first experience of getting drunk; he has met with a powerful thing which he does not know how to handle."

"I knew that he prayed a great deal, of course for help in the examinations. But subsequent clinical experience has convinced me that God is not particularly interested in examinations, just as he won't be dragged into the Stock Market, or being a backer in show business."

"Whoever declares a child to be "delicate" thereby crowns and anoints a tyrant."

"Clarity is not a characteristic of the human spirit."

"Perhaps the word for the feeling I mean is serenity, a high acceptance, a recognition that Heracleitus's doctrine of eternal flow is a great truth, and while we may not, in ourselves, find the moment when the one element changes into the other, that moment will come and the consciousness of its inevitability may give us courage in adversity, and balance in good fortune."

"The people who fear humour — and they are many — are suspicious of its power to present things in unexpected lights, to question received opinions and to suggest unforeseen possibilities."

"No, the Golden Mean is not a sunny, untroubled nullity, but a deep awareness of possibilities, with one eye cocked toward Comedy and the other eye skewed toward Tragedy, and out of this feat of balanced observation emerges Humour, not as a foolish amusement or an escape from reality, but as a breadth of perception, and what Heracleitus called "an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre". A reconciliation of opposites, indeed."

"Moderation, the Golden Mean, the Aristonmetron, is the secret of wisdom and of happiness. But it does not mean embracing an unadventurous mediocrity: rather it is an elaborate balancing-act, a feat of intellectual skill demanding constant vigilance. Its aim is a reconciliation of opposites."

"The mind of man, though perhaps the most splendid achievement of evolution, is not, surely, that answer to every problem of the universe. Hamlet suffers, but the Gravediggers go right on with their silly quibbles."

"I once had a dispute with a group of Swedish professors at the University of Uppsala as to which country, Sweden or Canada, was the dullest in the world. It was a draw; they claimed superiority because of their long history, and I claimed it because of Canada's immense land mass, which gives us space for tremendous expansion, even of such things as dullness."