“If you read quickly to get through a poem to what it means, you have missed the body of the poem.”
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When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas.
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The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.
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When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.
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The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives.
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Hard work makes easy reading or, at least, easier reading.
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