Classical art, in a word, stands for form; romantic art for content. The romantic artist expects people to ask, What has he got to... say? The classical artist expects them to ask, How does he say it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The true novel wrestles on the edge of understanding, lying about on all sides desperately, for every sort of experience, pressing... into use every flash of intuition or correspondence, trying to fuse together the crudest of materials, and the humblest, which the higher arts can't include. But it is precisely here, where the writer fights with the raw, the intractable, that poetry is born. Poetry, that is, of the novel: appropriate to it. The Story of an African Farm is a poetic novel; and when one has done with the "plot" and the characters, that is what remains: an endeavor, a kind of hunger, that passionate desire for growth and understanding, which is the deepest pulse of human beings.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...it's dynamite to spend future earnings. I have had a taste of it myself, and it's mighty bitter. A debt is a debt, whether it's... margins or mortgages; and debts are all the same, no matter how you try to camouflage 'em. You never get much out of 'em except trouble. On the farm or in Wall Street, if you use the other fellow's money, it costs you a lot more than it's worth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
On the farm I had learned how to meet realities without suffering either mentally or physically. My initiative had never been blun...ted. I had freedom to succeed--freedom to fail. Life on the farm produces a kind of toughness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »