Quote

Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.

Denise Levertov

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Denise Levertov
Age: 74 †
Born: 1923
Born: October 24
Died: 1997
Died: December 20
Poet
Translator
Writer
Ilford
London
Priscilla D Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertoff
Priscilla Denise Levertov
Jobs
Otherwise
Order
Teaching
Ideas
Wouldn
Things
Teacher
Levels
Talk
Phony
Idea
Encourage
Understand
Teachers

More quotes by Denise Levertov

Image
Both art and faith are dependent on imagination both are ventures into the unknown.
Denise Levertov
Image
The world is not with us enough. O taste and see.
Denise Levertov
Image
An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top of the hill looks over the fog, send up not one bird. So absolute, it is no other than happiness itself, a breathing too quiet to hear.
Denise Levertov
Image
Mountain, mountain, mountain, marking time. Each nameless, wall beyond wall, wavering redefinition of horizon.
Denise Levertov
Image
What joy when the insouciant armadillo glances at us and doesn't quicken his trotting across the track into the palm brush. What is this joy? That no animal falters, but knows what it must do?
Denise Levertov
Image
my pleasure was in the strength of my back, in my noble shoulders, the cool smooth flesh cylinders of my arms.
Denise Levertov
Image
Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.
Denise Levertov
Image
Do you mistake me? I am speaking of living, of moving from one moment into the next, and into the one after, breathing death in the spring air.
Denise Levertov
Image
The AvowalAs swimmers dareto lie face to the skyand water bears them,as hawks rest upon airand air sustains themso would I learn to attain freefall, and floatinto Creator Spirit's deep embrace,knowing no effort earnsthat all-surrounding grace.
Denise Levertov
Image
Peace as a positive condition of society, not merely as an interim between wars, is something so unknown that it casts no images on the mind's screen.
Denise Levertov
Image
The threat of world's end is the old threat.
Denise Levertov
Image
The fire in leaf and grass so green it seems each summer the last summer.
Denise Levertov
Image
The vast silence of Buddha overtakes and overrules the oncoming roar of tragic life that fills alleys and avenues it blocks the way of pedicabs, police, convoys.
Denise Levertov
Image
Let the space under the first storey be dark, let the water lap the stone posts, and vivid green slime glimmer upon them let a boat be kept there.
Denise Levertov
Image
There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.
Denise Levertov
Image
Every day, every day I hear enough to fill a year of nights with wondering.
Denise Levertov
Image
Breathe the sweetness that hovers in August.
Denise Levertov
Image
Let me walk through the fields of paper touching with my wand dry stems and stunted butterflies.
Denise Levertov
Image
Each part of speech a spark awaiting redemption, each a virtue, a power in abeyance.
Denise Levertov
Image
Mediocrity is perhaps due not so much to lack of imagination as to lack of faith in the imagination, lack of the capacity for this abandon.
Denise Levertov