"What is the secret of his critical gift that distinguishes it from others? Partly, I think, his individual approach, which is easy to recognize but hard to define, because it combines the qualities of the professional and the amateur. Professional in its seriousness, is technical proficiency and its regard for the subject; amateur (in the original sense) of loving or liking the subject too much to let himself be bound by hard-and-fast rules of treatment... [H]is love of literature is too strong a thing to be forced into the channel of a single theme. It overflows its banks for the mere pleasure of it – and as all his readers know, to give pleasure is one of his main objects in writing. Writing without pleasure, given and received, is dead: it is one of the essential differences between art and science."
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Historians from EnglandLiterary criticsUniversity of Oxford facultyBiographers from EnglandUniversity of Oxford alumni
Original Language: English
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Sources
L. P. Hartley, 'Lord David Cecil', in Essays & Poems Presented to Lord David Cecil (1970), p. 4
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_David_Cecil
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Lord David Cecil
Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil CH (9 April 1902 – 1 January 1986) was a British biographer, historian, and scholar. He held the style of "Lord" by courtesy, as a younger son of a marquess.
22 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Lord David Cecil →
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