Wilson was not, in the academic sense, a scholar or historian. He was an enormous reader, one of those readers who are perpetually on the scent from book to book. He was the old-style man of letters, but galvanized and with the iron of purpose in him.

Great artists are always far-seeing. They easily avoid the big stumbling blocks of fact. They rely on their own simplicity and vision. It is fact-fetichism tha…

Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to p…

Most comic writers like to think they could play it straight if only their public would let them. Waugh is able to be grave without difficulty for he has alway…

Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

Wilson was not, in the academic sense, a scholar or historian. He was an enormous reader, one of those readers who are perpetually on the scent from book to bo…

Do not read as children do to enjoy themselves, or, as the ambitious do to educate themselves. No, read to live.