If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the differenc… - Clive James

Santayana was probably wrong when he said that those who forget the past are condemned to relive it. Those who remember are condemned to relive it too.

It often happens that we are most touched by what we are least capable of. Evanescent delicacy is not the quality in the arts that I admire most, but it is often the characteristic by which I am most reduced to envy.

The literary critic, or the critic of any other specific form of artistic expression, may detach himself from the world for as long as the work of art he is contemplating appears to do the same.