Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The only true hope for civilization-the conviction of the individual that his inner life can affect outward events and that, whether or not he does so he is responsible for them.
Stephen Spender
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Stephen Spender
Age: 86 †
Born: 1909
Born: February 28
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Poet
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
London
England
Stephen Harold Spender
Individual
Affect
True
Conviction
Doe
Inner
Life
Responsible
Civilization
Events
Whether
Hope
Outward
More quotes by Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great...Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun, and left the vivid air signed with their honor.
Stephen Spender
If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.
Stephen Spender
Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds, Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity. But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds, This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.
Stephen Spender
Cult: simply an extension of the idea that everyone's supreme aim in life is self- fulfillment and happiness and that one is entitled to wreck marriage, children and certainly one's health and sanity in pursuit of this.
Stephen Spender
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
Stephen Spender
I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.
Stephen Spender
When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender
I think of those who were truly great. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Stephen Spender
When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.
Stephen Spender
Poetry cannot take sides except with life.
Stephen Spender
My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as 'Puritan decadence'. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.
Stephen Spender
What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can speak for those who are silent.
Stephen Spender
You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed. All England lies beneath you like a woman With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eyes.
Stephen Spender
Bright clasp of her whole hand around my finger My daughter as we walk together now. All my life I'll feel a ring invisibly Circle this bone with shining When she is grown.
Stephen Spender
The iron arc of the avoiding journey Curves back upon my weakness at the end Whether the faint light spark against my face Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight, Centre and circumference are both my weakness.
Stephen Spender
My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse And shut upon obscurity my acts Cast to their opposites by impatient violence Break up the sequent path they fly On a circumference to avoid the centre.
Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Stephen Spender
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Stephen Spender
So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself
Stephen Spender
A poet has to adapt himself, more or less consciously,to the demands of his vocation, and hence the peculiarities of poets and the condition of inspiration which many people have said is near to madness... The problem of creative writing is essentially one of concentration... a focusing of the attention in a special way.
Stephen Spender
