The survival of artistic modes in which we recognize ourselves, identify ourselves and place ourselves will survive as long as humanity survives. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
Key metaphors help determine what and how we perceive and how we think about our perceptions. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
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. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and invented selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
The first test any poem must pass is no longer, ‘Is it true to nature?’ but a criterion looking in a different direction: namely, ‘Is it sincere? Is it genuine?’ M. H. Abrams Read Quote
When I was a graduate student, the leading spirits at Harvard were interested in the history of ideas. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
The Romantics were whipping boys of the New Criticism, but they appealed to me anyway. I was recalcitrant. It was clear to me that they had thought innovatively. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
If you learn one thing from having lived through decades of changing views, it is that all predictions are necessarily false. M. H. Abrams Read Quote
