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The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.

William Empson

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William Empson
Age: 77 †
Born: 1906
Born: September 27
Died: 1984
Died: May 15
Literary Critic
Poet
Writer
Hull
England
Machinations
Ambiguity
Roots
Among
Poetry
Art

More quotes by William Empson

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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.
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The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.
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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.
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Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.
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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
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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.
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The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.
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All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.
William Empson
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The difficult part of good temper consists in forbearance, and accommodation to the ill-humors of others.
William Empson
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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.
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It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.
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Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
William Empson
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Poetry contains nothing haphazard.
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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?
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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.
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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
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This world is good enough for me, if only I can be good enough for it.
William Empson
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Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.
William Empson
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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
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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