Thought provoking

Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic characters we see into the language we understand.

You have only to stroll along the Strand on a wet winter’s night and watch the crowds lining up to get into the movies. These lowbrows are waiting, after the day’s work, in the rain, sometimes for hours, to get into the cheap seats and sit in hot theatres in order to see what their lives look like. Since they are lowbrows, engaged magnificently and... See more

“It’s not bad. It’s not good either. It’s more like nothing—not good or bad, aesthetically or morally.”

The highbrow “is the man or woman of thoroughbred intelligence who rides his mind at a gallop across country in pursuit of an idea. That is why I have always been so proud to be called highbrow. That is why, if I could be more of a highbrow I would.” She went on to cite some of her highbrow idols—Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Charlotte... See more

C.S. Lewis on why culture and learning still matter in times of crisis:

“Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have

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Both the highbrow and the lowbrow know their likes and dislikes, but the middlebrow “is the man, or woman, of middlebred intelligence who ambles and saunters now on this side of the hedge, now on that, in pursuit of no single object, neither art itself nor life itself.” The middlebrow is a dishonest consumer of art who prefers smoothed out... See more