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Authors:

Harold Bloom quotes

American Critic July 11, 1930

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Quotes

One measures oncoming old age by its deepening of Proust, and its deepening by Proust. How to read a novel? Lovingly, if it shows itself capable of accomodating one's love; and jealously, because it can become the image of one's limitations in time and space, and yet can give the Proustian blessing of more life. Harold Bloom
Criticism starts - it has to start - with a real passion for reading. It can come in adolescence, even in your twenties, but you must fall in love with poems. Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom quote: "We'll try this first. If it doesn't work, we'll try something..."
We'll try this first. If it doesn't work, we'll try something else. That's life, isn't it? Harold Bloom
The art and passion of reading well and deeply is waning, but [Jane] Austen still inspires people to become fanatical readers. Harold Bloom
... one doesn't want to read badly any more than live badly, since time will not relent. I don't know that we owe God or nature a death, but nature will collect anyway, and we certainly owe mediocrity nothing, whatever collectivity it purports to advance or at least represent. Harold Bloom
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. Harold Bloom
Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy that rule our state? How do we address the self-inflicted catastrophes that devastated our natural environment? So large is our malaise that no single writer can encompass it. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us. An institutionalized counterculture condemns individuality as archaic and depreciates... Harold Bloom
I think the Greek New Testament is the strongest and most successful misreading of a great prior text in the entire history of influence. Harold Bloom
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... Harold Bloom
We can be reluctant to recognize how much of our culture was literary, particularly now that so many of the institutional purveyors of literature happily have joined in proclaiming its death. A substantial number of Americans who believe they worship God actually worship three major literary characters: the Yahweh of the J Writer (earliest author of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers), the Jesus of the Gospel of Mark, and Allah of the Koran. Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom quote: "I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron."
I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron. Harold Bloom
We read deeply for varied reasons, most of them familiar: that we cannot know enough people profoundly enough; that we need to know ourselves better; that we require knowledge, not just of self and others, but of the way things are. Harold Bloom
Harold Bloom quote: "Marxism, famously a cry of pain rather than a science, has had..."
Marxism, famously a cry of pain rather than a science, has had its poets, but so has every other major religious heresy. Harold Bloom
All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is. Harold Bloom
If I were to sum up the negative reactions to my work, I think there are two primary causes: one is that if there is discourse about anxiety it is necessarily going to induce anxiety. It will represent a return of the repressed for a great many people. Harold Bloom

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