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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.
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
Children
Marriage
Cult
Life
Health
Sanity
Simply
Entitled
Happiness
Fulfillment
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Aim
Wreck
Everyone
Pursuit
Wrecks
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Extension
Self
Certainly
Extensions
More quotes by Stephen Spender
Poetry cannot take sides except with life.
Stephen Spender
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Stephen Spender
If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.
Stephen Spender
There is a certain justice in criticism.
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
History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.
Stephen Spender
Never allow gradually the traffic to smother with noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
Stephen Spender
When you read and understand a poem, comprehending its rich and formal meanings, then you master chaos a little.
Stephen Spender
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
For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust
Stephen Spender
No one Shall hunger: Man shall spend equally. Our goal which we compel: Man shall be man.
Stephen Spender
Religion stands, the Church blocking the sun.
Stephen Spender
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
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
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
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Stephen Spender
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
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
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
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
