43 quotes
People marry most happily with their own kind. The trouble lies in the fact that people usually marry at an age where they do not really know what their own kind is.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
The clerisy are those who read for pleasure, but not for idleness; who read for pastime but not to kill time; who love books, but do not live by books.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Nobody can find fault with legitimate ambition, but when the wealth of the spiritual and intellectual life is reduced to a formula for overcoming sales resistance, we protest.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
The past is only partly irrecoverable. The clerisy should accord it at least as much courtesy as they offer to the future.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
The reader cannot create; that has been done for him by the author. The reader can only interpret, giving the author a fair chance to make his impression.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
One receives the impression from his writings that he made it his plan to read any book whatever that no one else can bear to read.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
If you can, and if you are a playgoer and a filmgoer, you should be able to find voices for all the characters in the books you read.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
But the temptation to wallow and disport myself in the purple prose of the doting collector is strong, and it will need all my vigilance to resist it.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
The best among our writers are doing their accustomed work of mirroring what is deep in the spirit of our time; if chaos appears in those mirrors, we must have faith that in the future, as always in the past, that chaos will slowly reveal itself as a new aspect of order.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
It would certainly be better if a writer like Leacock knew always what was best to do and what would look best in the eyes of posterity, but such unnatural foresight cannot be required of any man.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Books of the avant-garde either establish themselves as books of lasting value, or they slip from the rear guard into the discard, and I believe the writers I mentioned have not proven trivial.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
When a man has become a great figure in society as a physician, we must not be surprised if he regards the laws of society as the laws of Nature — but we need not respect him for it.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
The day has long passed when a university degree was a guarantee of experience in the humanities, or of literacy beyond its barest meaning of being able, after a fashion, to read and write.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
In an age where public health has never been better provided for, and medical men enjoy a respect formerly reserved for the aristocracy and the clergy, millions of people are unwell, or merely feel unwell, or are in dread lest at some future time they may become unwell.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Quaint though this attitude seems now, it was unquestionably the prevalent one in the nineteenth century, and it would be over-bold to say that it will never return to favour, for the range of human folly is infinite.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
The true realist is he who believes in both God and the Devil, and is prepared to attempt, with humility, to sort out some corner of the extraordinary tangle of their works which is our world. He cannot use his feeling alone, he must use his intellect.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
It is not as though "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" was a precept from which splendid fiction could not be drawn; it is rather that what these small-time rebels choose to do is so trivial, so cheap, and in the end, so dreary.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
For them, in a time when the individual has lost significance (despite loud assertions to the contrary), an informed, rational, and intellectually adventurous individuality must take precedence over all else. In their seeming disunion lies their real strength.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Not all readers are prepared, at all times, to make independent judgments. But the failure of modern education to equip them to do so even when they have the inclination creates a serious gap in modern culture.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)
Perhaps the most striking difference between Malory's Morte d'Arthur and Tennyson's Idylls of the King is that Malory's women are all human beings, and that Tennyson's are, in greater or less degree, prizes for good conduct.
A Voice from the Attic (1960)