Christopher Ricks Quotations

I think the wish to disassociate from the cult of self is a good human impulse,

The one thing worse than not living for ever would be living for ever

Geniuses are at work in the rock music field, and great popularity is no proof you aren't good.

The fabliau, then, is a short story that is a tall story. It combines a burly blurting of dirty words with a reveling in humiliations that are good unclean fun. A popular venture that is keen to paste—épater—everybody (not just the bourgeoisie), it is the art of the single entendre. Highly staged low life, it guffaws at the pious, the prudish, and the priggish. High cockalorum versus high decorum…. The introduction here, like the translator’s note, tells well the story of the comic tales, anonymous for the most part, usually two or three hundred lines long, of which about 160 exist.

Geniuses are people who notice things and connections between things which others haven't noticed. Genius must be a surprise.

For it is characteristic of true simplicity that there may radiate from its utmost directness a good many glinting things.

A great work of art is one that continues to repay attention.

When a language creates - as it does - a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

When a language creates as it does a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

When a language creates -- as it does -- a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.

That's not the same thing as saying that the latest account that he gives should be unmistakably taken as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I wouldn't say he never wanted to be followed or be called a leader. (But) he probably wanted it less than it seemed at the time.