Art & Creativity Quote by Moses Hadas

A sentence this mild doesn’t land by accident; it lands by calibration. Moses Hadas, a classicist with a dry sensibility, gives you praise trimmed down to the bone: “I have read your book and much like it.” The first clause is doing more than reporting completion. It’s an implicit credential, a little stamp of seriousness in the republic of letters where plenty of compliments are issued by people who plainly haven’t turned the pages. He’s saying: I did the work, so my approval counts.

Then comes the interesting part: “much like it,” not “loved it,” not “admired it,” not even “liked it very much.” The wording has an old-fashioned, slightly foreign tilt, as if he’s translating himself from a more formal register. That mild awkwardness can read as modesty or as mischief: praise offered in a form that refuses to perform enthusiasm. It’s appreciation that won’t audition for the role of blurber.

The subtext is a gentle assertion of independence. Hadas isn’t joining a chorus; he’s issuing a verdict, compact and self-contained. It also carries a faint whiff of academic restraint: approval, yes, but no surrender to hype. In the ecosystem of publishing - where overstatement is the default currency - this kind of underlit compliment becomes its own status symbol. It suggests a world where being sparing with words is a sign of taste, and where sincerity is protected by understatement rather than amplified by superlatives.