Source: Enemies of Promise (1938), Part 1: Predicament, Ch. 3: The Challenge to the Mandarins (p. 17-18)
Context: The Mandarin style at its best yields the richest and most complete expression of the English language. It is the diction of Donne, Browne, Addison, Johnson, Gibbon, de Quincey, Landor, Carlyle and Ruskin as opposed to that of Bunyan, Dryden, Locke, Defoe, Cowper, Cobbett, Hazlitt, Southey and Newman. It is characterized by long sentences with many dependent clauses, by the use of the subjunctive and conditional, by exclamations and interjections, quotations, allusions, metaphors, long images, Latin terminology, subtlety and conceits. Its cardinal assumption is that neither the writer nor the reader is in a hurry, that both are possessed of a classical education and a private income. It is Ciceronian English.
“Surrey, for his justness of thought, correctness of style, and purity of expression, may justly be pronounced the first English classical poet.”
Thomas Warton The History of English Poetry (1774-81) vol. 3, p. 27.
Criticism
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Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey 16
English Earl 1516–1547Related quotes
“The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 386.
Source: The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967), Chapter VI, THE CONTAGION OF LIBERTY, p. 273.
“High poet, pride of the English squires,
I would be just a nettle in your garden.”
Poete hault, loenge d'escuiye,
En ton jardin ne seroie qu'ortie.
"Grant translateur, noble Geoffroy Chaucier" line 31; text and translation from Ian S. Laurie and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi (eds.), David Curzon and Jeffrey Fiskin (trans.) Eustache Deschamps: Selected Poems (London: Routledge, 2003) pp. 70-71.
Lecture at Oxford as quoted in Time (15 December 1961).
General sources
Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 108-109
Context: The Three Stages of Cultivation — The first is the primitive stage. It is a stage of original ignorance in which a person knows nothing about the art of combat. In a fight, he simply blocks and strikes instinctively without a concern for what is right and wrong. Of course, he may not be so-called scientific, but, nevertheless, being himself, his attacks or defenses are fluid. The second stage — the stage of sophistication, or mechanical stage — begins when a person starts his training. He is taught the different ways of blocking, striking, kicking, standing, breathing, and thinking — unquestionably, he has gained the scientific knowledge of combat, but unfortunately his original self and sense of freedom are lost, and his action no longer flows by itself. His mind tends to freeze at different movements for calculations and analysis, and even worse, he might be called “intellectually bound” and maintain himself outside of the actual reality. The third stage — the stage of artlessness, or spontaneous stage — occurs when, after years of serious and hard practice, the student realizes that after all, gung fu is nothing special. And instead of trying to impose on his mind, he adjusts himself to his opponent like water pressing on an earthen wall. It flows through the slightest crack. There is nothing to try to do but try to be purposeless and formless, like water. All of his classical techniques and standard styles are minimized, if not wiped out, and nothingness prevails. He is no longer confined.
“If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.”
Source: The Naked Civil Servant; How To Become A Virgin; Resident Alien
Nobel lecture http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1980/milosz-lecture-en.html (8 December 1980)