The need for a body of common knowledge and common reference does not disappear when a society is largely pluralistic, as ours has become. On the contrary, it grows more necessary, so that people of different origins and occupation may quickly find familiar ground and, as we say, speak a common language. It not only saves time and embarrassment, but it also ensures a kind of mutual confidence and good will. One is not addressing an alien, blank as a stone wall, but a responsive creature whose mind is filled with the same images, memories, and vocabulary as oneself.
Jacques Barzun (1907-2012) French-American historian, educator, polymath
“Of What Use the Classics Today?,” Lecture, St. John’s College (1987-07-17)
(Source)
Collected in Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning (1991).
Quotations about:
classic
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Shake was a dramatist of note:
He lived by writing things to quote.H. C. Bunner (1855-1896) American novelist and poet [Henry Cuyler Bunner]
“Shake, Mulleary and Go-ethe”
(Source)
Referring to Shakespeare, who is quite quotable (and, in the rest of the poem, referencing Molière and Goethe, the last of which he rhymes with "teeth"). More information on the poem at the Source link.
Sometimes paraphrased, "Shakespeare was a dramatist of note / Who lived by writing things to quote."
“Classic.” A book which people praise and don’t read.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Following the Equator, ch. 25, epigraph (1897)
(Source)
Styles, like everything else, change. Style doesn’t.
Linda Ellerbee (b. 1944) American broadcast journalist
Move On: Adventures in the Real World (1991)
You can “just listen” to the Brahms violin concerto and enjoy it keenly. But if you read about Brahms’ life, you appreciate it more. And, if you’ve listened to recordings of it, you will appreciate it ten times as much.
Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987) Lithuanian-American violinist
(Unsourced)
Quoted on his official web page.