The Functions of Criticism at the Present Time (1864)
“Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world.”
Vol. 3, p. 611
A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day
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George Saintsbury 14
British literary critic 1845–1933Related quotes
“Of all that is written I love only what a man has written in his own blood.”
Source: Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
“All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.”
Source: Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943), p. 194
Context: Culture is knowing the best that has been thought and said in the world; in other words, culture means reading, not idle and casual reading, but reading that is controlled and directed by a definite purpose. Reading, so understood, is difficult, and contrary to an almost universal belief, those who can do it are very few. I have already remarked the fact that there is no more groundless assumption than that literacy carries with it the ability to read. At the age of seventy-nine Goethe said that those who make this assumption "do not know what time and trouble it costs to learn to read. I have been working at it for eighteen years, and I can't say yet that I am completely successful."
Marginalia http://www.easylit.com/poe/comtext/prose/margin.shtml (November 1844)
Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 17