The world of literature is a world where there is no reality except that of the human imagination.

What 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.

The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.

Myths, as compared with folk tales, are usually in a special category of seriousness: they are believed to have "really happened,"or to have some exceptional significance in explaining certain features of life, such as ritual. Again, whereas folk tales simply interchange motifs and develop variants, myths show an odd tendency to stick together and build up bigger structures. We have creation myths, fall and flood myths, metamorphose and dying-god myths.

Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.

Every human society possesses a mythology which is inherited, transmitted and diversified by literature.

The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.