Search quotes

Link	Quote	Tags	Author
4ced2e9	At eighty-four, I can only write the way I go on teaching, personally and passionately.		Harold Bloom
341afff	Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it, is in the first place 'literary', which is to say personal and passionate. It is not philosophy, politics, or institutionalised religion. At its strongest - Johnson, Hazlitt, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and Paul Valeer, among others - it is a kind of wisdom literature, and so a meditation upon life. Yet any distinction between literature and life is misleading. Literature for me is not mer..	literature	Harold Bloom
2c30a51	Capital is necessary to the cultivation of esthetic value.	stewardship	Harold Bloom
d537584	Don't be looking for trifles, Senor Don Quixote, or expect things to be impossibly perfect. Are not a thousand comedies performed almost every day that are full of inaccuracies and absurdities, yet they run their course and are received not only with applause but with admiration and all the rest?		Harold Bloom
5075e35	The democratic age mourns the value of human beings.	mortality	Harold Bloom
767590c	Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue."	inspiration maturation reading rhetoric vocabulary word-choice	Harold Bloom
37e8add	We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.	literature loss reading relationships words	Harold Bloom
ad2da92	The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called "aesthetic dignity." One"		Harold Bloom
f3612d5	The defense of the great works of Western literature can no longer be undertaken by central institutional power though it is hard to see how the normal operation of learned institutions, including recruitment can manage without them.		Harold Bloom
ada172e	One mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies.	bias conventional-wisdom culture perspective reading	Harold Bloom
6f72ecb	I could not find any evidence that her circumstances had harmed Jane Austen's work in the slightest. That, perhaps, was the chief miracle about it. Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. Her mind consumed all impediments.	liberality openness optimism	Harold Bloom
545cd59	Great writing is always rewriting or revisionism, and is founded on a reading that clears space for the self.	culture heritage legacy originally	Harold Bloom
b7378e7	The inventor knows HOW to borrow.	communication evangelism heritage innovation legacy	Harold Bloom
2d44c92	My introduction, implicitly echoing Oscar Wilde's remark that all bad poetry is sincere, grants the benign social decency of [Stephen] King's fictions.		Harold Bloom
d8f5368	Like television, motion pictures, and computers, [Stephen] King has replaced reading...the triumph of the genial King is a large emblem of the failures of American education.		Harold Bloom
fa1b661	Reviewing bad books is bad for the character - WH Auden	culture influence reading	Harold Bloom
4a74e13	I cannot locate any aestetic dignity in [Stephen] King's writing: his public could not sustain it, nor could he...Art unfortunately is rarely the fruit of earnestness, and King will be remembered as a sociological phenomenon, an image of the death of the Literate Reader.		Harold Bloom
b595b0d	When critics surrender to the prevailing orthodoxy, the author says they adopt the rhetoric of an occupied country, "one that expects no liberation from liberation."	bias conformity conventional-wisdom paranormal perspective romance science-fiction	Harold Bloom
6b48cc3	The aesthetic is an individual rather than a societal concern.	independence perspective	Harold Bloom
bb86e9b	If we read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will become monsters of selfishness and exploitation.		Harold Bloom
6bf7796	Frye's influence on me lasted twenty years but came to an abrupt halt on my thirty-seventh birthday, July 11, 1967, when I awakened from a nightmare and then passed the entire day in composing a dithyramb, "The Covering Cherub; or, Poetic Influence."		Harold Bloom
12c0678	For Ibsen, gusto forgives almost everything.	enthusiasm	Harold Bloom
8684d54	No one dies halfway through the last act. - Heinrich Ibsen	grace-of-god pessimism sovereignty-of-god	Harold Bloom
fcf8b64	The old-fashioned sins of reading is the only sense that matters.	intuition openness storytelling	Harold Bloom
379f94f	The freedom to apprehend aesthetic value may rise from class conflict, but the value is not identical with the freedom, even if it cannot be achieved without that apprehension. Aesthetic value is by definition engendered by an interaction between artists, an influencing that is always an interpretation.		Harold Bloom
c987e9b	monsters of selfishness and exploitation. To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all. The reception of aesthetic power enables us to learn how to talk to ourselves and how to endure ourselves.		Harold Bloom
5d6233f	BLOOM: I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.		Harold Bloom
7f57db6	Poetry, at the best, does us a kind of violence that prose fiction rarely attempts or accomplishes.		Harold Bloom
d1b5b72	thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more.		Harold Bloom
8308a65	You cannot locate Shakespeare in his own works, not even in the sonnets. It is in this near invisibility that encourages the zealots who believe that almost anyone wrote Shakespeare, except Shakespeare himself.		Harold Bloom
190c0cc	Hope and joy, however irrational, are stronger than dispair, and ultimately more pernicious.		Harold Bloom
bec3b6c	Jesus is present only as a supreme representation of suffering and change, one that Shakespeare (in his dangerous era) shrewdly and invariably avoided.		Harold Bloom
a897321	The tragic sense of life in Don Quixote is also the faith of Moby Dick. Ahab is a monomaniac; so is the kindlier Quixote, but both are tormented idealists who seek justice in human terms, not as theocentric men but as ungodly, godlike men.		Harold Bloom
4c458cb	The outward limit of human achievement.		Harold Bloom
7a16f79	My dear, that won't do.		Harold Bloom

At eighty-four, I can only write the way I go on teaching, personally and passionately.

Harold Bloom

341afff

Literary criticism, as I attempt to practice it, is in the first place 'literary', which is to say personal and passionate. It is not philosophy, politics, or institutionalised religion. At its strongest - Johnson, Hazlitt, Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, and Paul Valeer, among others - it is a kind of wisdom literature, and so a meditation upon life. Yet any distinction between literature and life is misleading. Literature for me is not mer..

literature

Harold Bloom

2c30a51

Capital is necessary to the cultivation of esthetic value.

stewardship

Harold Bloom

d537584

Don't be looking for trifles, Senor Don Quixote, or expect things to be impossibly perfect. Are not a thousand comedies performed almost every day that are full of inaccuracies and absurdities, yet they run their course and are received not only with applause but with admiration and all the rest?

Harold Bloom

5075e35

The democratic age mourns the value of human beings.

mortality

Harold Bloom

767590c

Samuel Johnson said Alexander Pope's translation of the Iliad, "tuned the English tongue."

inspiration maturation reading rhetoric vocabulary word-choice

Harold Bloom

37e8add

We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish or disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.

literature loss reading relationships words

Harold Bloom

ad2da92

The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called "aesthetic dignity." One"

Harold Bloom

f3612d5

The defense of the great works of Western literature can no longer be undertaken by central institutional power though it is hard to see how the normal operation of learned institutions, including recruitment can manage without them.

Harold Bloom

ada172e

One mark of originality that can win canonical status for a literary work is strangeness that we either never altogether assimilate, or that becomes such a given that we are blinded to its idiosyncrasies.

bias conventional-wisdom culture perspective reading

Harold Bloom

6f72ecb

I could not find any evidence that her circumstances had harmed Jane Austen's work in the slightest. That, perhaps, was the chief miracle about it. Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. Her mind consumed all impediments.

liberality openness optimism

Harold Bloom

545cd59

Great writing is always rewriting or revisionism, and is founded on a reading that clears space for the self.

culture heritage legacy originally

Harold Bloom

b7378e7

The inventor knows HOW to borrow.

communication evangelism heritage innovation legacy

Harold Bloom

2d44c92

My introduction, implicitly echoing Oscar Wilde's remark that all bad poetry is sincere, grants the benign social decency of [Stephen] King's fictions.

Harold Bloom

d8f5368

Like television, motion pictures, and computers, [Stephen] King has replaced reading...the triumph of the genial King is a large emblem of the failures of American education.

Harold Bloom

fa1b661

Reviewing bad books is bad for the character - WH Auden

culture influence reading

Harold Bloom

4a74e13

I cannot locate any aestetic dignity in [Stephen] King's writing: his public could not sustain it, nor could he...Art unfortunately is rarely the fruit of earnestness, and King will be remembered as a sociological phenomenon, an image of the death of the Literate Reader.

Harold Bloom

b595b0d

When critics surrender to the prevailing orthodoxy, the author says they adopt the rhetoric of an occupied country, "one that expects no liberation from liberation."

bias conformity conventional-wisdom paranormal perspective romance science-fiction

Harold Bloom

6b48cc3

The aesthetic is an individual rather than a societal concern.

independence perspective

Harold Bloom

bb86e9b

If we read the Western Canon in order to form our social, political, or personal moral values, I firmly believe we will become monsters of selfishness and exploitation.

Harold Bloom

6bf7796

Frye's influence on me lasted twenty years but came to an abrupt halt on my thirty-seventh birthday, July 11, 1967, when I awakened from a nightmare and then passed the entire day in composing a dithyramb, "The Covering Cherub; or, Poetic Influence."

Harold Bloom

12c0678

For Ibsen, gusto forgives almost everything.

enthusiasm

Harold Bloom

8684d54

No one dies halfway through the last act. - Heinrich Ibsen

grace-of-god pessimism sovereignty-of-god

Harold Bloom

fcf8b64

The old-fashioned sins of reading is the only sense that matters.

intuition openness storytelling

Harold Bloom

379f94f

The freedom to apprehend aesthetic value may rise from class conflict, but the value is not identical with the freedom, even if it cannot be achieved without that apprehension. Aesthetic value is by definition engendered by an interaction between artists, an influencing that is always an interpretation.

Harold Bloom

c987e9b

monsters of selfishness and exploitation. To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all. The reception of aesthetic power enables us to learn how to talk to ourselves and how to endure ourselves.

Harold Bloom

5d6233f

BLOOM: I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron.

Harold Bloom

7f57db6

Poetry, at the best, does us a kind of violence that prose fiction rarely attempts or accomplishes.

Harold Bloom

d1b5b72

thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more.

Harold Bloom

8308a65

You cannot locate Shakespeare in his own works, not even in the sonnets. It is in this near invisibility that encourages the zealots who believe that almost anyone wrote Shakespeare, except Shakespeare himself.

Harold Bloom

190c0cc

Hope and joy, however irrational, are stronger than dispair, and ultimately more pernicious.

Harold Bloom

bec3b6c

Jesus is present only as a supreme representation of suffering and change, one that Shakespeare (in his dangerous era) shrewdly and invariably avoided.

Harold Bloom

a897321

The tragic sense of life in Don Quixote is also the faith of Moby Dick. Ahab is a monomaniac; so is the kindlier Quixote, but both are tormented idealists who seek justice in human terms, not as theocentric men but as ungodly, godlike men.

Harold Bloom

4c458cb

The outward limit of human achievement.

Harold Bloom

7a16f79

My dear, that won't do.

Harold Bloom