Quote

I say that what one loves is best: The midnight fastness of the heart.

Allen Tate

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Best
Heart
Midnight
Loves

More quotes by Allen Tate

Image
The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.
Allen Tate
Image
I believe the term modulation denotes in music the uninterrupted shift from one key to another: I do not know the term for change of rhythm without change of measure.
Allen Tate
Image
Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection.
Allen Tate
Image
I have felt darkness lead me by the hand Over the hill to greet the singing dawn.
Allen Tate
Image
The Spring I seek is in a new face only.
Allen Tate
Image
Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
I thought I heard the dark pounding its head On a rock, crying: Who are the dead?
Allen Tate
Image
My darling boy whom I shall never know, My son, I love you in my deepest fears.
Allen Tate
Image
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
Image
Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.
Allen Tate
Image
Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.
Allen Tate