“We read frequently if unknowingly, in quest of a mind more original than our own.”

“We read, frequently if not unknowingly, in search of a mind more original than our own.”

“We read to find ourselves, more fully and more strangely than otherwise we could hope to find.”

“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.”

“The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is why we should read, and why we should read only the best of what has been written.”

“The originals are not original, but that Emersonian irony yield to the Emersonian pragmatism that the inventor knows how to borrow.”

“For more than half a century I have tried to confront greatness directly, hardly a fashionable stance, but I see no other justification for literary criticism in the shadows of our Evening Land. Over time the strong poets settle these matters for themselves, and precursors remain alive in their progeny. Readers in our flooded landscape use their own perceptiveness. But an advance can be of some help. If you believe that the canon in time will select itself, you still can follow a critical impulse to hasten the process, as I did with the later Stevens, Ashbury, and, more recently, Henri Cole.”