"Criticism is not a science whose elements can be mass-taught to adolescents — it is a difficult art, at which even adults are seldom a notable success. With the young the result is often that they either just regurgitate the judgements they have been taught, or else, if they have a natural and healthy rebelliousness, the opposite of what they have been taught. Thence it is possible to arrive by easy stages at the happy notion, not uncommon among 'intellectuals', that taste consists of distaste, and that the loftiest of pleasures is that of feeling displeased; and thus to end by enjoying almost nothing in literature except one’s own opinions, while oneself incapable of writing a living sentence."
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1. The Value of Style (p. 25)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/F._L._Lucas
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F. L. Lucas
Frank Laurence Lucas OBE (28 December 1894 – 1 June 1967) was an English classical scholar, literary critic, poet, novelist, playwright, polemicist, and a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. He was also an intelligence officer at Bletchley Park during World War II.
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