Literature keeps presenting the most vicious things to us an entertainment, but what it appeals to is not any pleasure of these things, but the exhilaration of standing apart from them and being able to see them for what they are because they aren't really happening. The more exposed we are to this, the less likely we are to find an unthinking pleasure in cruel or evil things. As the eighteenth century said in a fine mouth-filling phrase, literature refines our sensibilities.

About This Quote

About Northrop Frye

Northrop Frye was a 20th-century Canadian literary critic. Herman Northrop Frye was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Read more on Wikipedia →

More quotes by Northrop Frye

Related Quotes