Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills. - William Empson

Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend,
Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end,
Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend,
Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson are the greatest English critics of their respective centuries not least because they are the funniest.