Quote

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished bride of quietness, then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

Terry Eagleton

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Terry Eagleton
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: February 22
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Literary Theorist
Non-Fiction Writer
Researcher
University Teacher
Writer
Salford
Greater Manchester
Approach
Bus
Murmur
Stop
Literary
Deviate
Literature
Presence
Systematically
Language
Thou
Quietness
Stills
Aware
Transforms
Still
Everyday
Bride
Book
Speech
Brides
Deviates
Ordinary
Instantly
Intensifies

More quotes by Terry Eagleton

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Capitalism cannot survive without a working class, while the working class can flourish a lot more freely without capitalism.
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There is an insuperable problem about introducing immigrants to British values. There are no British values. Nor are there any Serbian or Peruvian values. No nation has a monopoly on fairness and decency, justice and humanity.
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Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.
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Being brought up in a culture is a matter of learning appropriate forms of feeling as much as particular ways of thinking.
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In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility.
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We face a conflict between civilisation and culture, which used to be on the same side. Civilisation means rational reflection, material wellbeing, individual autonomy and ironic self-doubt culture means a form of life that is customary, collective, passionate, spontaneous, unreflective and arational.
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You can tell that the capitalist system is in trouble when people start talking about capitalism.
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The political currents that topped the global agenda in the late 20th century - revolutionary nationalism, feminism and ethnic struggle - place culture at their heart.
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Theology, however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialized world
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It is false to believe that the sun revolves around the earth, but it is not absurd.
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Like all the best radical positions, then, mine is a thoroughly traditionalist one.
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To declare in St John's words that Jesus and the Father are one is to claim that Jesus's dependence on the Other is not self-estrangement but self-ful lment. At the core of his identity ..lies nothing but unconditional love.
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Man eternally tries to get back to an organic past that has slipped just beyond his reach.
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God chose what is weakest in the world to shame the strong.
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For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human.
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I say that virtue is really all about enjoying yourself, living fully but of course it is far from obvious what living fully actually means.
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If the masses are not thrown a few novels , they may react by throwing up a few barricades.
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Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
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The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play or novel, rather than an account of the incidence of soil erosion in Nebraska.
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Nations sometimes flourish by denying the crimes that brought them into being. Only when the original invasion, occupation, extermination or usurpation has been safely thrust into the political unconscious can sovereignty feel secure.
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