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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.

Allen Tate

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Allen Tate
Age: 79 †
Born: 1899
Born: November 19
Died: 1979
Died: February 9
Author
Literary Critic
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Winchester
Kentucky
John Orley Allen Tate
Achieve
Study
Effort
Culture
Perfection
Constant

More quotes by Allen Tate

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In the cold morning the rested street stands up To greet the clerk who saunters down the world.
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The torrent of the reaching shade Broke shadow into all its parts, What then had been of shadow made Found exigence in fits and starts.
Allen Tate
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There's precious little to say between day and dark, Perhaps a few words on the implacable will Of time sailing like a magic barque Or something as fine for the amenities.
Allen Tate
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There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.
Allen Tate
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The day's at end and there's nowhere to go, Draw to the fire, even this fire is dying Get up and once again politely lying Invite the ladies toward the mistletoe.
Allen Tate
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I had kept opaque Down deeper than the canyons undersea The sullen spectrum of a buried lake Nobody saw not seen even by me.
Allen Tate
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According to its doctors, my one intransigent desire is to have been a Confederate general, and because I could not or would not become anything else, I set up for poet and beg an to invent fictions about the personal ambitions that my society has no use for.
Allen Tate
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Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus: For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm.
Allen Tate
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What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.
Allen Tate
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The dreary flies, lazy and casual, Stick to the ceiling, buzz along the wall. O heart, the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving, between the pinks and grapes, his pall.
Allen Tate
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My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.
Allen Tate
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Let us lie down once more by the breathing side Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep As if the Known Sea still were a month wide-- Atlantis howls but is no longer steep!
Allen Tate
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Death's long anabasis.
Allen Tate
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But we shall not know the world by looking at it we know it by looking at the hovering fly.
Allen Tate
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Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.
Allen Tate
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The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail Far off a precise whistle is escheat To the dark and then the towering weak and pale.
Allen Tate
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The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
Allen Tate
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And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.
Allen Tate
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Let us begin to understand the argument. There is a solution to everything: Science.
Allen Tate
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Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a ham actor, not a poet.
Allen Tate