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Most of my writing consists of an attempt to translate aphorisms into continuous prose.

Northrop Frye

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Northrop Frye
Age: 78 †
Born: 1912
Born: July 14
Died: 1991
Died: January 23
Cleric
Literary Critic
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Poet
Writer
Continuous
Translate
Consists
Prose
Attempt
Writing
Aphorisms
Aphorism

More quotes by Northrop Frye

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The simplest questions are the hardest to answer.
Northrop Frye
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The primary and literal meaning of the Bible, then, is its centripetal or poetic meaning.
Northrop Frye
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Man lives, not directly or nakedly in nature like the animals, but within a mythological universe, a body of assumptions and beliefs developed from his existential concerns.
Northrop Frye
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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.
Northrop Frye
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No human society is too primitive to have some kind of literature. The only thing is that primitive literature hasn't yet become distinguished from other aspects of life: it's still embedded in religion, magic and social ceremonies.
Northrop Frye
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[Science fiction is] a mode of romance with a strong inherent tendency to myth.
Northrop Frye
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In literature, questions of fact or truth are subordinated to the primary literary aims of producing a structure of words for its own sake, and the sign-values of symbols are subordinated to their importance as a structure of interconnected motifs.
Northrop Frye
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Americans like to make money Canadians like to audit it. I don't know of any other country where the accountant enjoys a higher social and moral status.
Northrop Frye
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The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.
Northrop Frye
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The disinterested imaginative core of mythology is what develops into literature, science, philosophy. Religion is applied mythology.
Northrop Frye
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Popular art is normally decried as vulgar by the cultivated people of its time then it loses favor with its original audience as a new generation grows up then it begins to merge into the softer lighting of
Northrop Frye
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I don't see how the study of language and literature can be separated from the question of free speech, which we all know is fundamental to our society.
Northrop Frye
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The tremendous efficiency and economy of the book has once again demonstrated itself. It's the world's most patient medium.
Northrop Frye
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This story of loss and regaining of identity is, I think, the framework of all literature.
Northrop Frye
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Man creates what he calls history as a screen to conceal the workings of the apocalypse from himself.
Northrop Frye
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One doesn't bother to believe the credible: the credible is believed already, by definition. There's no adventure of the mind.
Northrop Frye
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Read Blake or go to hell, that's my message to the modern world.
Northrop Frye
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The human landscape of the New World shows a conquest of nature by an intelligence that does not love it.
Northrop Frye
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Characters tend to be either for or against the quest. If they assist it, they are idealized as simply gallant or pure if they obstruct it, they are characterized as simply villainous or cowardly. Hence every typical character...tends to have his moral opposite confronting him, like black and white pieces in a chess game.
Northrop Frye
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The fable says that the tortoise won in the end, which is consoling, but the hare shows a good deal of speed and few signs of tiring.
Northrop Frye