It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.

How to tell students what to look for without telling them what to see is the dilemma of teaching.

It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.

No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.

It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.