I don't believe any of you have ever read PARADISE LOST, and you don't want to. That's something that you just want to take on trust. It's a classic, just as Professor Winchester says, and it meets his definition of a classic -- something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.
- "The Disappearance of Literature" speech, 20 November 1900

Note: Professor Winchester was Caleb Thomas Winchester (1847-1920), librarian of Connecticut Wesleyan University from 1869 - 1885 and Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature there from 1873 - 1920.