Anecdotal Evidence

'Now I Live Predominantly Through Them'

'How Does It Go From There?'

'Pretty Twinklings'

'Luck Is That Part of Art Practice Replaces'

'This Interplay of Past and Present'

'And All Are Lucky Just to Be Alive'

'Release from the Relentless Consciousness of Self'

'They Are Read When They're No Longer There'

'Like a Soaking Rain'

'Farewell, Dear Friend!'

'He Loved What He Was Doing'

'All with Precious Jewels Strow'd'

'Reading, Thinking and, Eventually, Writing'

'Give Thanks for All Things'

'The Rarest of Achievements'

'I Don't Think Much of It'

'There Is No Wisdom Here; Seek Not For It!'

'Seven Books'

'Ignorance, Madam, Pure Ignorance'

'Amused Sympathetic Affection'

'Look for the Ridiculous in Everything'

'Whence Comes That Small Continuous Silence?'

'May the Days Be Worthy of Your Wonder'

'Mere Gall Is No Better Than Mere Sugar'

'A Plaything Lent Me for the Present'

'They Don’t Have Sense Enough to See Our Flaws'

'Having Such an Enjoyable Time All the Time'

'I Can Taste the Language'

'Untrue For Ever'

'Time So Vicious in His Reaping'

'A Tiny Inkling of Things Far Beyond Me'

'You Must First Invent the Universe'

'A Form of Knowledge'

'Give Thanks, Give Thanks'

'Hold Fast, Hold Fast to These'

'A Harmless Drudge'

'A Paradise and Cabinet of Rarities'

'Discipline Imposed By Ourselves'

'These Ghosts Which Claim My Book'

'A Word So Delicious'

'Weldon Kees: The Disappearing Poet'

'To Notice, to Wonder, to Marvel, to Be Astonished'

'Try to Make Something New'

'But in Them There Is a Different Look'

'A Line or Two Worth Keeping All Too Rare'

'Under the Same Architrave'

'The Morning Sun Discovers an Opossum'

'The Old and New Imperatives of Wit''

'It Is Common to the Whole Country'

'Pure Farce Covers a Far Greater Field of History'

'To Seize the Greatness Not Yet Fairly Earned'

'Enjoying a Fine Day, a Joke, a Meal?'

'Nothing Is Promised'

'I Shall Load Up the Shelves Again

'Being But a Dream'

'Like the Clothes He Wears'

'The Few Feet of Books in My Library Case'

'Never Without the Company of Books'

'Picture the World Without Her in It'

'His Own Discriminating Piety'

'I Make Little Choice at Table'

'This Does Not Flatter Us'

'Varied, Inconsistent and Unpredictable'

'The Self-Appointed Guardian of English Literature'

'The Worst of Bores'

'A Veritable Swiss Army Knife of a Book'

'Responsibility to the Accurate Word'

'We Must Examine and Fix What Ignorance Is'

'More Recent Misjudgments'

'Evidence on Which a Life Depends'

'You Are Never Out of Business'

'To Find Joy in the Everyday, in Life Itself'

'To Settle Upon Its Most Inspired Bit'

'I Wish I Knew More About . . .'

'My Mind Was Not Free From Perturbation'

'To Have Something to Say'

'A Yellow Flower Growing in the Grass'

'Bracing and Beautiful'

'Poetry Instructs by Delighting'

'I Have No Puling Apology to Make'

'The Happy Morning Is Over'

'That Late Death Took All My Heart for Speech'

'In the Middle of a Seismic Cultural Change'

'Only Two Loop-holes Then I might Behold'

'A Distant Dissonance, Treble-cleft'

'The Exotic is Everywhere'

'With Such Beauty'

'It Has a Kind of Toughness'

'What Mattered Most to Him Was Writing'

'The Habit of Reading Something More Lasting'

'The Complex and Indwelling Emotion'

'Something to Be Found Out'

'Put Yourself in Your Reader's Place'

'Yet Still He Fills Affection’s Eye'

'He Loved What He Was Doing'

'The Most Corrupt Writer Who Ever Lived'

'The Only Information I am Seriously Interested In'

'Nor a Single Thing That Belongs to Us'

'A Certain Self-Knowledge'

'I Think We Forget Too Easily'

'Quaffs, crams, and guttles'

'The Greeks Knew What They Were Talking About'

'Never to Gain an Advantage'

'To the Learning of Some Art or Science'

'The Unique Emotional Language of Our Age'

'But to Divert a Fierce Banditti'

'One Feels the Benefit Afterwards'

'Leaning Through Silence to a Dead Man’s Mind'

'An Old, Tried, and Valued Friend'

'It’s Mainly Because of Thanksgiving'

'A False Tooth, or a Rhinoplastic Nose'

"Year Chases Year, Decay Pursues Decay'

'Incipient Opportunity'

'Good for More Than One of Us That He Was Here'

'But O the Heavy Change, Now Thou Art Gone'

'He Will Return Deeply Dyed the True Tint'

'Anthologies of Miscellaneous Literary Passages'

'The Magic of Association'

'Willingness to Hear'

'Civilization Is Memory'

'Not Impressed by Bombast or Lofty Tone'

'So Much for the Philosophy of Old Age'

'And Probably Permanently'

'Professional Seers-Off'

'The Great Writers Are My Teachers'

'This Is Not What We Were Formerly Told'

'Fugitives From the Law of Averages'

'I Cannot Distil a Review From This New Book Yet'

'One Should Ask One’s Heart Three Questions'

'You Rcognize It Later from the Ache of Memory'

'The First Test of Greatness for a Book'

'Only Santayana Can Make Me Laugh Aloud'

'Slobber, Booger, Spit, and Blob--'

'A Small Number of Books That Are Something More'

'No Shade, No Shine, No Butterflies, No Bees'

'In Those Old Marshes Yet the Rifles Lie'

'I Hold It Towards You'

'And the Memory I Started At—'

'Level with Life'

'Simply Leaving Me Flat Cold'

'A Far More Agreeable Venture'

'No Impediment to Doing Whatever One Will'

'But I Had to Keep Going'

'When You Desperately Need Other People'

'Like This Little Patch of Yellow Wall'

'Very Little a Truly Moral Voice Can Say'

'It Was a Mild, Clammy Evening . . .'

'Trained Not to Argue But to Look'

'A Natural and Grave Distinction of Air'

'An Ironist of the Contemplative Life'

'Give Me a Land of Boughs in Leaf'

''This Saves Us From Being Oppressed'

'Having Actually Pleased Intelligent Children'

'Pride of Reading Is a Terrible Thing'

'Singularly Modest and Deferential'

'Dubious Enterprises Flourish Here'

'The Subtle Layerings of Spice and Tang'

'Child, Man and Old Crone'

'May His Books Swarm Again When Selected'

'The Ones I Never Had the Time to Read'

'The Right to Live As a Natural Right'

'One More Way in Which the Earth is Heating Up'

'He Often Said Just Nothing At All'

'Your Heart's Beat an Allusion'

'That Pleasing and Often Rewarding Genre'

'When I Feel Spiritually Bruised'

'A Joyousness That Brings Joy to This Room'

'Silence Where Hope Was'

'Born Under One Law, to Another Bound'

'Fluid As Mood and Ponderous As Grief'

'Cordial Old Man!'

'The Word Dear Alone Hangs on the Upper Verge'

'An Ambition to Copiousness and Eloquence'

'Sapient; Judging Rightly; Having Much Knowledge'

'That Sheer Spiritual Tackiness'

'Pleasant-Sounding, Flowing, Musical'

'Let the Mind Take Its Photograph'

'Though One Need Not Yet Quite Define Peru'

'Away Melancholy'

'The Occasions When We Are Set Free'

'We Must Have Within Us That Spirit of Quiet'

'With You in Shame or Fame They Dwell'

'He Never Reached the Equanimity of Age'

'A Careful Reading of the Present Volume'

'Ease Anguish With Your Voice'

'The Beautiful Light of Health'

'An Integral of Various Dissimilar Parts'

'Indulgence in Pure Corn'

'Tell Me About All You Read'