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Reading the very best writers__et us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy__s not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.
Harold Bloom The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages
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Reading the very best writers__et us say Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Tolstoy__s not going to make us better citizens. Art is perfectly useless, according to the sublime Oscar Wilde, who was right about everything. He also told us that all bad poetry is sincere. Had I the power to do so, I would command that these words be engraved above every gate at every university, so that each student might ponder the splendor of the insight.
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Harold Bloom

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

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