Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out ... and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts, because, if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles …

Good-night; ensured release, Imperishable peace, Have these for yours, While sea abides, and land, And earth's foundations stand, And heaven endures.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have r…

A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.

One of our universities recently made a survey of the reading habits of the American public; it decided that forty-eight percent of all Americans read, during …