Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Living
Active
Sacramental
Spirit
Civilization
Receptive
Body
Dead
Idleness
Without
Side
Realised
Would
Sides
Passive
World
Creative
Meaningless
Within
Immortal
Reading
Bodies

More quotes by Stephen Spender

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Stephen Spender
Image
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
Image
When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender
Image
No one Shall hunger: Man shall spend equally. Our goal which we compel: Man shall be man.
Stephen Spender
Image
So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself
Stephen Spender
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
Stephen Spender
Image
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Stephen Spender
Image
If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.
Stephen Spender
Image
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
Image
Religion stands, the Church blocking the sun.
Stephen Spender
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is a certain justice in criticism.
Stephen Spender