Literary Critics

"In plain words; now that Britain has told the world she has the H-Bomb, she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island . . . No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it."

"No matter what is willed by consciousness, that which belongs to the depths can only be restored in the depths: the numinous lies outside the power of collectives, cannot be subject to state decree, created by a resolution at an international conference, offered to all shareholders and employees by the board of Standard Oil or General Motors."

"Although we talk so much about coincidence we do not really believe in it. In our heart of hearts we think better of the universe, we are secretly convinced that it is not such a slipshod, haphazard affair, that everything in it has meaning."

"Mrs Bevison-Burr, the commanding woman, came next. Her subject was Unbelief. She referred to Unbelief as if it were a very obnoxious person who was in the habit of insulting her every morning and evening. Mrs Bevison-Burr commanded them to do all manner of things to Unbelief."

"We cannot go forward and build up this new world order, and this is our war aim, unless we begin to think differently...one must stop thinking in terms of property and power and begin thinking in terms of community and creation. Property is the old-fashioned way of thinking of a country as a thing, and a collection of things in that thing, all owned by certain people and constituting property; instead of thinking of a country as the home of a living society with the community itself as the first test."

"We English certainly do not like working for work's sake. There is nothing inside us that cries to be set going at an early hour and kept at it until a late hour. We have no private passion for being industrious."

"I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from 'em by calling 'em the masses and then you accuse 'em of not having any faces."

"It's silly for young men to announce themselves as new types of humanity. . .and then give you nothing but stale communism. Old H.G. Wells has more new ideas than the lot of them."

"I wished I had been born early enough to have been called a Little Englander. It was a term of sneering abuse, but I should be delighted to accept it as a description of myself. That little sounds the right note of affection. It is little England I love."

"It should be realised that men will take enormous risks rather than be bored. War has been used before now to prevent a bored populace from getting into mischief, at the expense of its rulers."

"Living in age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch."

"I have lived longer than you. I have thought more, and I have suffered more. And I tell you there is more truth to the fundamental nature of things in the most foolish fairy tales than there is in any of your complaints against life."

"Remember what we once were and what we thought we'd be. And now this. And it's all we have, Allan, it's us. Every step we've taken -- every tick of the clock -- making everything worse. If this is all life is, what's the use? Better to die, like carol, before you find it out, before Time gets to work on you. I've felt it before, Allan, but never as I've done tonight. There's a great devil in the universe, and we call it Time."

"Shaw presumes that his friend Stalin has everything under control. Well, Stalin may have made special arrangements to see that Shaw comes to no harm, but the rest of us in Western Europe do not feel quite so sure of our fate, especially those of us who do not share Shaw's curious admiration for dictators."

"But the point is, now, at this moment, or at any moment, we're only a cross-section of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time, and when we come to the end of this life, all those selves, all our time, will be us -- the real you, the real me. And then perhaps we'll find ourselves in another time, which is only another kind of dream."

"Cathedral cities, market towns, ports forgotten by the sea, spas long out of fashion, all these can decay beautifully, and often their charm increases as the life ebbs out of them. Industrial towns, like steam-engines, are only even tolerable if they are in working order and puffing away."

"Those no-sooner-have-I-touched-the-pillow people are past my comprehension. There is something suspiciously bovine about them."

"I suppose -- in the last resort -- you trust life -- or you don't. Well -- I don't. There's something malicious . . . corrupt . . . cruel . . . at the heart of it. We don't belong. We're a mistake."

"Our great-grand-children, when they learn how we began this war by snatching glory out of defeat, and then swept on to victory, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious."

"In this place, whether we call it Bruddersford or Pittford Falls, perfection is not to be found, neither in men nor in the lot they are offered, to say nothing of the tales we tell of them, these hints and guesses, words in the air and gesticulating shadows, these stumbling chronicles of a dream of life."

"He was quite capable of talking just as men talk in bad stories in popular magazines, and Miss Matfield had sometimes wondered whether it was because he had read a great many bad stories or because the stories were nearer the truth than one thought and were worked up, on the fringes of Empire, out of men like Major Ansdell."

"Your mother knows no more about organization than a — a prize rabbit."

"I dwell no more in Arcady:— But when the sky is blue with May, And flowers spring up along the way, And birds are blithe, and winds are free, I know what message is for me,— Fotr I have been in Arcady."

"This Life is a fleeting breath, And whither and how shall I go, When I wander away with Death By a path that I do not know?"

"I hied me off to Arcady— The month it was the month of May, And all along the pleasant way The morning birds were mad with glee, And all the flowers sprang up to see, As I went on to Arcady."

"At end of Love, at end of Life, At end of Hope, at end of Strife, At end of all we cling to so— The sun is setting—must we go?At dawn of Love, at dawn of Life, At dawn of Peace that follows Strife, At dawn of all we long for so— The sun is rising—let us go."

"There is rust upon locks and hinges, And mold and blight on the walls, And silence faints in the chambers, And darkness waits in the halls."

"Youth is thy gift—the youth that baffles Time."

"Bend low, O dusky Night, And give my spirit rest; Hold me to your deep breast, And put old cares to flight; Give back the lost delight That once my soul possest, When Love was loveliest,— Bend low, O dusky night!"

"Nothing is truly great which it is great to despise; wealth, honor, reputation, absolute power—anything in short which has a lot of external trappings—can never seem supremely good to the wise man because it is no small good to despise them. People who could have these advantages if they chose but disdain them out of magnanimity are admired much more than those who actually possess them."

"Sublimity is the echo of greatness of spirit."

"Thee, bold Longinus! all the Nine inspire, And bless their Critick with a Poet's Fire. An ardent Judge, who Zealous in his Trust, With Warmth gives Sentence, yet is always Just; Whose own Example strengthens all his Laws, And Is himself that great Sublime he draws."

"Utterances which appear inspired are often not sublime but merely childish."

"There are, one may say, some five most productive sources of the sublime in literature, the common groundwork, as it were, of all five being competence in speaking, without which nothing can be done. The first and most powerful is the power of grand conceptions…and the second is the inspiration of vehement emotion. The other three come partly from art, namely the proper construction of figures – these being of course of two kinds, figures of thought and figures of speech – and, over and above these, nobility of language…The fifth cause of grandeur, which gives form to all those already mentioned, is dignified and elegant word-arrangement."

"Sublimity is the echo of a noble mind."

"φύσει γὰρ ἅπαντες οἱ μεγέθους ἐφιέμενοι, φεύγοντες ἀσθενείας καὶ ξηρότητος κατάγνωσιν, οὐκ οἶδ᾿ ὅπως ἐπὶ τοῦθ᾿ ὑποφέρονται, πειθόμενοι τῷ ῾μεγάλων ἀπολισθαίνειν ὅμως εὐγενὲς ἁμάρτημα.᾿"

"Genius needs the curb as often as the spur."

"The images make for confusion rather than forcefulness. Examine each in the light of day and it gradually sinks from the terrible to the ridiculous."

"To miss a high aim is to fail without shame."

"Ah! sovereign Love, forgive this weaker rhyme! The men of old who sang were great at heart, Yet have we too known woe, and worn thy rose."

"Canst thou not wait for Love one flying hour O heart of little faith?"

"A sheep in sheep's clothing."

"The wizard silence of the hours of dew."

"I did not want my son remembered by uncontrolled howls of pain. My wife and I suffered more than I can express, but to make poems merely out of the agony would have been self-pitying and dishonest. My son had been my greatest joy. His birth had left me awe-struck and humble before life. He turned me from a son into a father — and allowed me to understand my own father clearly for the first time. If I mourned him, I also wanted to preserve the joyful mystery of his existence. The sorrow could not be adequately appreciated without also expressing the joy and wonder."

"Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what matters is what a reader actually finds there — which is usually something both more and less than the poet planned."

"The marketplace does only one thing — it puts a price on everything.The role of culture, however, must go beyond economics. It is not focused on the price of things, but on their value. And, above all, culture should tell us what is beyond price, including what does not belong in the marketplace. A culture should also provide some cogent view of the good life beyond mass accumulation. In this respect, our culture is failing us."

"I want a poetry that can learn as much from popular culture as from serious culture. A poetry that seeks the pleasure and emotionality of the popular arts without losing the precision, concentration, and depth that characterize high art. I want a literature that addresses a diverse audience distinguished for its intelligence, curiosity, and imagination rather than its professional credentials. I want a poetry that risks speaking to the fullness of our humanity, to our emotions as well as to our intellect, to our senses as well as our imagination and intuition. Finally I hope for a more sensual and physical art — closer to music, film, and painting than to philosophy or literary theory. Contemporary American literary culture has privileged the mind over the body. The soul has become embarrassed by the senses. Responding to poetry has become an exercise mainly in interpretation and analysis. Although poetry contains some of the most complex and sophisticated perceptions ever written down, it remains an essentially physical art tied to our senses of sound and sight. Yet, contemporary literary criticism consistently ignores the sheer sensuality of poetry and devotes its considerable energy to abstracting it into pure intellectualization. Intelligence is an irreplaceable element of poetry, but it needs to be vividly embodied in the physicality of language. We must — as artists, critics, and teachers — reclaim the essential sensuality of poetry. The art does not belong to apes or angels, but to us. We deserve art that speaks to us as complete human beings. Why settle for anything less?"

"Poetry is not a branch of analytical philosophy. It is a primal, holistic kind of human communication. A poet needs innocence as much as knowledge, emotion as much as intelligence, vulnerability as much as rigor. A poet can become too smart for his or her own good and forget the childlike pleasures of sound and story, sense, and sensuality that poetry should provide. The challenge for a writer is to master the medium of poetry without losing that inner innocence."

"Tradition is not, as post-modernists maintain, a library or museum the artist plunders. It is the endless conversation between the living and the dead. Young artists enter into this conversation passionately — not merely intellectually, though study and analysis play a part. They live and breathe it. Tradition is not a public building. It is a love affair."

"The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society."