I am naive enough to read incessantly because I cannot, on my own, get to know enough people profoundly enough. Harold Bloom More Quotes by Harold Bloom More Quotes From Harold Bloom There is no method except yourself. Harold Bloom method crafts We all fear loneliness, madness, dying. Shakespeare and Walt Whitman, Leopardi and Hart Crane will not cure those fears. And yet these poets bring us fire and light. Harold Bloom loneliness light fire Criticism in the universities, I'll have to admit, has entered a phase where I am totally out of sympathy with 95% of what goes on. It's Stalinism without Stalin. Harold Bloom criticism goes-on sympathy 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 inheritance encouragement giving 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 character believe jesus I take it that a successful therapy is an oxymoron. Harold Bloom oxymoron therapy successful Reading the very best writers—let us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy—is not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight. Harold Bloom sublime reading art What is supposed to be the very essence of Judaism - which is the notion that it is by study that you make yourself a holy people - is nowhere present in Hebrew tradition before the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of the Common Era. Harold Bloom eras essence people ... 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 collectivity mediocrity want More even than Southern Presbyterians and Southern Methodists, the Baptists provided the great mass of Confederate enlisted men. Harold Bloom southern men religion I would say that there is no future for literary studies as such in the United States. Harold Bloom united-states states study Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found? Harold Bloom available information found In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology. Freud finds ways of translating it into supposedly analytical vocabulary. Harold Bloom psychology vocabulary giving Hamlet, Kierkegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates. Harold Bloom repetition irony jesus 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. Harold Bloom political order believe The morality of scholarship, as currently practiced, is to encourage everyone to replace difficult pleasures by pleasures universally accessible precisely because they are easier. Harold Bloom morality easier pleasure Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention. Harold Bloom invention personality Unless you have read and absorbed the best that can be read and absorbed, you will not think clearly or well. Harold Bloom wells thinking The very best of all Merwin: I have been reading William since 1952, and always with joy. Harold Bloom has-beens reading joy Everything in life is arbitrary yet must be over-determined in literature. Jean McGarry knows how to tell a persuasive tale illuminating these truths. Harold Bloom arbitrary determined literature
