I will keep America moving forward, always forward--for a better America, for an endless enduring dream and a thousand points of l...ight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When they have a choice, people will always gravitate to those rooms which have light on two sides, and leave the rooms which are ...lit only from one side unused and empty.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.... He who works for sweetness and light united, works to m...ake reason and the will of God prevail.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Now bury your bird," the wind it bawled, "And bury him down and down... Who had to put his trust in one So light-eyed and so brown...."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The English public are not yet ripe to comprehend the essential difference between the reason and the understanding,--between a pr...inciple and a maxim--an eternal truth and a mere conclusion from a generalization of a great number of facts.... Suppose Adam watching the sun sinking under the horizon for the first time; he is seized with gloom and terror, relieved with scarce a ray of hope of ever seeing the glorious light again. The next evening when it declines, his hopes are stronger but mixed with fear, and even at the end of 1000 years, all that a man can feel, is hope and an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Compare this in its highest degree with the assurance which you have that the two sides of any triangle are greater than the third. This demonstrated of one triangle is seen to be eternally true of all imaginable triangles. This is the truth perceived at once by the reason, wholly independently of experience. It is and must ever be so, multiply and vary the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The bad lover, like the bad poet, perhaps because of a preoccupation with self, is essentially inattentive, doesn't listen, doesn'...t anticipate. Or, just as bad, proceeds by rote, first this thing and then the next, and therefore leaves no opportunity for discovery, or departure. Form to me implies an alertness to the demands of your material and an orchestration of effects. It is some happy combination of the poet's intent and the poem's esprit and the necessary compromises between the two. We can't be too willful, but we must have things in mind. We don't want to be the wimps of our own poems, but we'd be happy to be led into some lovely places. And we'd like to have some control after we lose control, at least enough to throw light on what has just hap pened, perhaps even to articulate what it has meant to us. And of course there are moments when we'd be better off being appreciatively silent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »