Quote

What is precious is never to forget, The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs, Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light, Nor its grave evening demand for love Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother, With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Stephen Spender

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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
Earth
Rocks
Evening
Gradually
Never
Blood
Noise
Traffic
Love
Morning
Delight
Grave
World
Pleasure
Deny
Breaking
Forget
Ancient
Worlds
Smother
Simple
Allow
Drawn
Flowering
Spirit
Spring
Graves
Fog
Light
Demand
Precious
Springs

More quotes by Stephen Spender

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If you get to a certain age, all people want to know about you is people you knew. ...An American student once said to me, you know, isn't it extraordinary that I am alive and you're not dead.
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I think continually of those who were truly great . Who, from the womb, remembered the soul 's history Through corridors of light where the hours are suns , Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire , Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song .
Stephen Spender
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There is a certain justice in criticism.
Stephen Spender
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My single pair of eyes Contain the universe they see Their mirrored multiplicity Is packed into a hollow body Where I reflect the many, in my one.
Stephen Spender
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Religion stands, the Church blocking the sun.
Stephen Spender
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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.
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Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
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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
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When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender
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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
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So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself
Stephen Spender
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For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust
Stephen Spender
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The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness.
Stephen Spender
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Under the olive trees, from the ground Grows this flower, which is a wound. It is easier to ignore Than the heroes' sunset fire Of death plunged in their willed desire Raging with flags on the world's shore.
Stephen Spender
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In railway halls, on pavements near the traffic, They beg, their eyes made big by empty staring And only measuring Time , like the blank clock. No, I shall weave no tracery of pen-ornament To make them birds upon my singing tree: Time merely drives these lives which do not live As tides push rotten stuff along the shore.
Stephen Spender
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I think continually of those who were truly great.
Stephen Spender
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History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
Stephen Spender
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One of my great surprises when I was in America was about twenty-five years ago in Harvard, hearing Randall Jarrell deliver a bitter attack on the way poets were neglected. Yet there were about two thousand people present, and he was being paid five hundred dollars for delivering this attack.
Stephen Spender
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All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.
Stephen Spender
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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