Different as the two poets are in many ways, and though Frost conducted a kind of private war with Eliot, it is possible to discer...n interesting resemblances beneath the obvious contrasts. In both men the central theme is metaphysical desolation. Both poets are profoundly at odds with the current of secular optimism flowing from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century. Frost's New England landscape, spare, hard, and usually unyield ing, inhabited by its declining Yankee stock, can be taken as an extended metaphor expressive of that desolation. In Frost's poetry the central persona or dramatic voice speaking the poems finds ways to live with that desolation. In Eliot's poetry the central persona lives through and finally beyond the desolation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflectin...g on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you'v...e been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Remember how often you have postponed minding your interest, and let slip those opportunities the gods have given you. It is now h...igh time to consider what sort of world you are part of, and from what kind of governor of it you are descended; that you have a set period assigned you to act in, and unless you improve it to brighten and compose your thoughts, it will quickly run off with you, and be lost beyond recovery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth ma...rking, in the lifetimes of many generations; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs of an afternoon--the most favored alternative method.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any honest examination of the national life proves how far we are from the standard of human freedom with which we began. The reco...very of this standard demands of everyone who loves this country a hard look at himself, for the greatest achievments must begin somewhere, and they always begin with the person. If we are not capable of this examination, we may yet become one of the most distinguished and monumental failures in the history of nations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I do not think that literature is the primary instrument for social transformation, but I do think it has potency. So I work to te...ll the truth about people's lives; I work to celebrate struggle, to applaud the tradition of struggle in our community, to bring to center stage all those characters, just ordinary folks on the block, who've been waiting in the wings, characters we thought we had to ignore because they weren't pimp-flashy or hustler-slick or because they didn't fit easily into previously acceptable modes or stock types. I want to lift up some usable truths ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There exists, between people in love, a kind of capital held by each. This is not just a stock of affects or pleasure, but also th...e possibility of playing double or quits with the share you hold in the other's heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »