Quote

Men expect too much, do too little, Put the contraption before the accomplishment, Lack skill of the interior mind To fashion dignity with shapes of air. Luxury, yes but not elegance!

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
Skills
Elegance
Air
Accomplishment
Fashion
Skill
Littles
Luxury
Little
Lack
Much
Dignity
Contraption
Mind
Shapes
Interior
Men
Expect
Interiors

More quotes by 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.
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At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor at twenty not to shoot at all I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
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I thought I heard the dark pounding its head On a rock, crying: Who are the dead?
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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.
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I say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.
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Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history.
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Good manners, Madam, are had these days not For your asking, nor mine, nor what-we-used-to-be's. The day is a loud grenade that bursts a smile Of serious weeds in a comic lily plot.
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So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
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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The poet is he who fights on the passionate Side and whoever loses he wins when he Is defeated it is hard to say who wins.
Allen Tate
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Ah, Christ, I love you rings to the wild sky And I must think a little of the past: When I was ten I told a stinking lie That got a black boy whipped.
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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The idiot greens the meadow with his eyes, The meadow creeps implacable and still A dog barks, the hammock swings, he lies. One two three the cows bulge on the hill.
Allen Tate
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Death's long anabasis.
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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In an age of abstract experience, fornication Is self-expression, adjunct to Christian euphoria, And whores become delinquents delinquents, patients Patients, wards of society. Whores, by that rule, Are precious.
Allen Tate