The genius of Man in our time has gone into jet-propulsion, atom-splitting, penicillin-curing, etc. There is none over for works o...f imagination; of spiritual insight or mystical enlightenment. I asked for bread and was given a tranquilliser. It is important to recognise that in our time man has not written one word, thought one thought, put two notes or two bricks together, splashed colour on to canvas or concrete into space, in a manner which will be of any conceivable imaginative interest to posterity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What brings enlightenment is experience, in the sad sense of this word--the pressure of hard facts and unintelligible troubles, ma...king a man rub his eyes in his waking dream, and put two and two together. Enlightenment is cold water.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get th...e two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Publicity! publicity! was the persistent demand. To meet the demand, small papers, owned and edited by women, sprang up all over t...he land, and like Jonah's gourd, perished in a night.... No use waiting to learn to put two consecutive sentences together in any connected form, or for an idea or the power of expressing it. One woman was printing her productions, and why should not all the rest do likewise? They had so long followed some leader like a flock of sheep, that now they would rush through the first gap into newspaperdom.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Two feathered guests from Alabama, two together, And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown,... And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand, And every day the she-bird crouched on her nest, silent, with bright eyes, And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them, Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O past! O happy life! O songs of joy! In the air, in the woods, over fields,... Loved! loved! loved! loved! loved! But my mate no more, no more with me! We two together no more.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Pour down your warmth, great sun! While we bask, we two together....
Two together! Winds blow south, or winds blow north, Day come white, or night come black, Home, or rivers and mountains from home, Singing all time, minding no time, While we two keep together.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means... of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »