M. H. Abrams

“The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.”

“Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself.”

“Literature is a vital part of the culture; it is one of the ways in which a society constitutes itself.”

“A work of art is a world in itself, reflecting senses and emotions of the artist's world.”

“In the expressive theory, the artist himself becomes the major element generating the artistic product, and the audience is secondary.”

“Criticism is the art of judging the qualities and values of an aesthetic object, whether in literature or the fine arts.”

“The truth is that the greatest artists have been good, healthy, and sane.”

“The poem is a little world, organized and existing in its own right.”

“Romantic poetry is a poetry of the self, but of a self that discovers its identity in relation to the outer world.”