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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
Culture
Perfection
Constant
Achieve
Study
Effort

More quotes by Allen Tate

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POET If not in a place, where are the People weeping? LIBERAL They creep weeping in the face, not place. POET Is it something with which we may cope The weeping, the creeping, the peepee-ing, the peeping?
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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Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
Allen Tate
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William Blake cursed the flesh for a clod, Yet of some of his sayings we Moderns have heard tell: 'The nakedness of woman is the work of God', Or that title--The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Allen Tate
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So the dubbed conceit Played nursery of cheat To clear the I of sleet.
Allen Tate
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Walk in this faithless grass with studious tread, Lest mice, weasels, germane beasts, too soon The tall hat and eyes, the fierce feet, for dead Descry, and fix you prone in their revelling moon.
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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I thought I heard the dark pounding its head On a rock, crying: Who are the dead?
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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The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
Allen Tate
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we know our end A packet of worm-seed, a garden of spent tissues.
Allen Tate
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Antiquity breached mortality with myths. Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates A cornice on the Third National Bank.
Allen Tate
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I say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.
Allen Tate
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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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Dramatic experience is not logical it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.
Allen Tate
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Punctilious abyss, the yawn of space Come once a day to suffocate the sight.
Allen Tate
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Therefore with idle hands and head I sit In late December before the fire's daze Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.
Allen Tate
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But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.
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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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