Separatism is a very healthy movement within culture. It's a disastrous movement within politics and economics.
Northrop FryeThe tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.
Northrop FryeI soon realized that a student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads: The most conscientous student will be continually misconstruing the implications, even the meaning.
Northrop FryeWhat if criticism is a science as well as an art? Not a pure or exact science, of course, but these phrases belong to a nineteenth-century cosmology which is no longer with us.
Northrop FryeIt is of the essence of imaginative culture that it transcends the limits both of the naturally possible and of the morally acceptable.
Northrop FryePoetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.
Northrop Frye