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

— M. H. Abrams Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)

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More quotes by M. H. Abrams

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

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

Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)

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

Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)

I think the hardest thing to teach a student is that what he or she puts down on paper is changeable.

People's Education interview (2007)

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

Cornell Chronicle interview (1999)

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: M. H. Abrams (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.