F. R. Leavis

"He doesn't know what he means, and doesn't know he doesn't know."

"The only way to escape misrepresentation is never to commit oneself to any critical judgement that makes an impact – that is, never to say anything. I still, however think that the best way to promote…"

"Not only is he not a genius; he is intellectually as undistinguished as it is possible to be."

"A good deal of Paradise Lost strikes one as being almost as mechanical as bricklaying."

"He is a critic of great gifts, insight and integrity; but those who are not entirely for him are wholly against him; he seeks not pupils but "disciples"; those disciples he has attracted who have not …"

"It is well to start by distinguishing the few really great – the major novelists who count in the same way as the major poets, in the sense that they not only change the possibilities of the art for p…"

"A powerful critical talent who destroyed his own sense of proportion, Leavis was our brush with totalitarianism: we caught it as a mild fever instead of the full attack of meningitis. His career was t…"

"The "great tradition" does not brook even the possibility of libidinal gratification between the pages as an end in itself, and FR Leavis's "eat up your broccoli" approach to fiction emphasises this j…"