Search in quotes: m+h+abrams

Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about work

I've always been surprised at the degree of success of The Mirror and the Lamp and duration of esteem for it. I had no reason to expect in 1953 that it would appeal to more than a specialized group interested in literary criticism.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about criticism, literary critic, success, reason

If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about things, contentment

If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about body, contentment

It's amazing how, age after age, in country after country, and in all languages, Shakespeare emerges as incomparable.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about country, age, olderness

John Updike is always fun. And one of my former students, Tom Pynchon. And Harold Bloom, another former student.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about students

Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about metaphors, help

Natural Supernaturalism is quite well known and even used as a textbook, but it never seems to have attracted the acclaim of its predecessor.

Quote by M. H. Abrams

Rap is far from an abstract, dematerialized mode of utterance. I hate a lot of rap because it's bad stuff, but it does emphasize the articulatory aspect of the words.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about hate, bad luck, word, bad

The appeal of literature is that it is so thoroughly a human thing-by, for and about human beings. If you lose that focus, you obviate the source of the power and permanence of literature.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about literature, concentration, human imperfections, power, things, contentment

The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about survival, humanity

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.

Quote by M. H. Abrams

We are human, and nothing is more interesting to us than humanity.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about humanity, human imperfections, nothing

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 tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy...

Quote by M. H. Abrams about army, tests, voice, ability

When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about students, history

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 an effect and will continue to have an effect.

Quote by M. H. Abrams about nation, people, contentment

CBS exhausted the Texas courts. They went from the trial court to the intermediate court to the highest court.

Quote by Floyd Abrams

CBS fought very hard on this because it believed and believes that there's a principle at stake here. The principle is that Dan Rather doesn't work for the police, and that people that speak to Dan Rather understand that he's a journalist and not...

Quote by Floyd Abrams about police, principle, journalism, work, people

Here we have a situation where a defendant in a case agrees to an interview with Dan Rather. It happened to be not confidential. But it was an interview with Dan Rather.

Quote by Floyd Abrams

I am really impressed by lawyers who write books and tell us that they never lost a case. Most lawyers who have never lost a case have not had enough hard cases. But there are very difficult cases out there.

Quote by Floyd Abrams about books