Great Throughts Treasury

"Poor Poe! At first so forgotten that his grave went without a tomb-stone twenty-six years. . . today in danger of becoming the life study of a few professors."

"Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation."

"Precisely because we do not communicate by singing, a song can be out of place but not out of character; it is just as credible that a stupid person should sing beautifully as that a clever person should do so."

"Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable."

"Private faces in public places are wiser and nicer than public faces in private places."

"Put the car away; when life fails what's the good of going to Wales? Here am I, here are you: but what does it mean? What are we going to do?"

"Recipe for the upbringing of a poet: 'As much neurosis as the child can bear."

"Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest."

"Sad is Eros, builder of cities, and weeping anarchic Aphrodite. [in memory of Sigmund Freud]"

"Say this city has ten million souls, some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us."

"See without looking, . . . hear without seeing, . . . breathe without asking."

"Shall memory restore the steps and the shore, the face and the meeting place."

"She was my North, my South, my East and West my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong."

"Show an affirming flame."

"Silence the pianos and with muffled drum bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good."

"Slavery is so intolerable a condition that the slave can hardly escape deluding himself into thinking that he is choosing to obey his master's commands when, in fact, he is obliged to. Most slaves of habit suffer from this delusion and so do some writers, enslaved by an all too ''personal'' style."

"Slowly we are learning, we at least know this much, that we have to unlearn much that we were taught, and are growing chary of emphatic dogmas; Love like Matter is much odder than we thought."

"So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises."

"Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy."

"Soft as the earth is mankind and both need to be altered."

"Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered."

"Some thirty inches from my nose the frontier of my Person goes, and all the untilled air between is private pagus or demesne. Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes I beckon you to fraternize, beware of rudely crossing it: I have no gun, but I can spit."

"Some writers confuse authenticity, which they ought always to aim at, with originality, which they should never bother about."

"Something to do with violence and the poor."

"Sorry, my dear, one mustn't be bohemian!"

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone. Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum, Bring out the coffin...let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle, moaning overhead, Scribbling on the sky the message: He is Dead. Put crepe bows 'round the necks of public doves, Let traffic policemen wear black, cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East, my West. My working week and my Sunday rest. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song, I thought love would last forever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now, put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour out the ocean and sweep up the wood, For nothing now can ever come to any good."

"Tell me what they did?"

"Than climb the cross of the moment"

"Thank God for books as an alternative to conversation."

"That really, really something done,"

"That the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes."

"The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen."

"The aim of education is to induce the largest amount of neurosis that the individual can bear without cracking."

"The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth."

"The basic stimulus to the intelligence is doubt, a feeling that the meaning of an experience is not self-evident."

"The belief that politics can be scientific must inevitably produce tyrannies. Politics cannot be a science, because in politics theory and practice cannot be separated, and the sciences depend upon their separation. Empirical politics must be kept in bounds by democratic institutions, which leave it up to the subjects of the experiment to say whether it shall be tried, and to stop it if they dislike it, because, in politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice."

"The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age."

"The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience."

"The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing? But nobody says this. The self-appointed unqualified nurse says: "You are to sing the patient a song which will make him believe that I, and I alone, can cure him. If you can't or won't, I shall confiscate your passport and send you to the mines." And the poor patient in his delirium cries: "Please sing me a song which will give me sweet dreams instead of nightmares. If you succeed, I will give you a penthouse in New York or a ranch in Arizona.""

"The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own."

"The critical opinions of a writer should always be taken with a large grain of salt. For the most part, they are manifestations of his debate with himself as to what he should do next and what he should avoid."

"The Dark opaque hope storm…"

"The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews not to be born is the best for man the second best is a formal order the dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy the tune is catching and will not stop, dance till the stars come down from the rafters, dance, dance, dance till you drop."

"The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music."

"The friends who met here and embraced are gone, each to his own mistake."

"The glacier knocks in the cupboard, the desert sighs in the bed, and the crack in the teacup opens a lane to the land of the dead."

"The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me."

"The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken; only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish."

"The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories."

"The mass and majesty of this world, all that carries weight and always weighs the same lay in the hands of others; they were small and could not hope for help and no help came: what their foes like to do was done, their shame was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride and died as men before their bodies died."