Quote

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

William Empson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Empson
Age: 77 †
Born: 1906
Born: September 27
Died: 1984
Died: May 15
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Hull
England
Different
Imaginative
Make
Central
People
Conviction
Function
Realize
Realizing
Literature
Moral
Convictions

More quotes by William Empson

Image
The difficult part of good temper consists in forbearance, and accommodation to the ill-humors of others.
William Empson
Image
Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end. What is there to be or do? What's become of me or you? Are we kind or are we true? Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.
William Empson
Image
Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves Birth, death one, many what is true, and seems Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.
William Empson
Image
I think many people (like myself) prefer to read poetry mixed with prose it gives you more to go by the conventions of poetry have been getting far off from normal life, so that to have a prose bridge makes reading poetry seem more natural.
William Empson
Image
Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend, Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end, Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend, Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?
William Empson
Image
It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.
William Empson
Image
Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry
William Empson
Image
This world is good enough for me, if only I can be good enough for it.
William Empson
Image
To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.
William Empson
Image
Poetry contains nothing haphazard.
William Empson
Image
Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.
William Empson
Image
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical.
William Empson
Image
Proust has listed a great many reasons why it is impossible to be happy, but, in the course of being happy, one finds it difficult to remember them.
William Empson
Image
Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.
William Empson
Image
I'm afraid I take ... this rather clinical view of love: it's saving you from madness. I'm not so enthusiastic as other poets have been.
William Empson
Image
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
William Empson
Image
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.
William Empson
Image
The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.
William Empson
Image
The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.
William Empson
Image
All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.
William Empson