Quote

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

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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
Path
Shut
Break
Cast
Eyes
Casts
Upon
Acts
Flinch
Eye
Opposites
Circumference
Words
Avoid
Obscurity
Light
Refuse
Impatient
Like
Violence
Centre

More quotes by Stephen Spender

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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
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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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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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There is a certain justice in criticism.
Stephen Spender
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I think continually of those who were truly great.
Stephen Spender
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Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Stephen Spender
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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
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What the eye delights in, no longer dictates My greed to enjoy: boys, grass, the fenced-off deer. It leaves those figures that distantly play On the horizon's rim: they sign their peace, in games.
Stephen Spender
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But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.
Stephen Spender
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If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.
Stephen Spender
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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
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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
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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
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History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
Stephen Spender
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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
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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.
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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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
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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
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So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself
Stephen Spender