The geometry of landscape and situation seems to create its own systems of time, the sense of a dynamic element which is cinematis...ing the events of the canvas, translating a posture or ceremony into dynamic terms. The greatest movie of the 20th century is the Mona Lisa, just as the greatest novel is Gray's Anatomy.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is fatally easy for Western folk, who have discarded chastity as a value for themselves, to suppose that it can have no value f...or anyone else. At the same time as Californians try to re-invent "celibacy," by which they seem to mean perverse restraint, the rest of us call societies which place a high value on chastity "backward."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Poetry is creative expression; poetry is constructive expression. That, in a sentence, is the real distinction.... In poetry the w...ords are born or re-born in the act of thinking. The words are, in Bergsonian phraseology, a becoming; they develop in the mind pari passu with the development of the thought. There is no time interval between the words and the thought. The thought is the word and the word is the thought, and both the thought and the word are Poetry. "Constructive" implies ready-made materials; words stacked round the builder, ready for use. Prose is a structure of ready-made words. Its "creative" function is confined to plan and elevation--functions these, too, of Poetry, but in Poetry subsidiary to the creative function.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If thou survive my well-contented day When that churl death my bones with dust shall cover,... And shalt by fortune once more re-survey These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover; Compare them with the bettering of the time, And though they be outstripped by every pen, Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme Exceeded by the height of happier men. Oh, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought-- \'Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age, A dearer birth than this his love had brought, To march in ranks of better equipage: But since he died, and poets better prove, Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.'LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Through spontaneity we are re-formed into ourselves. It creates an explosion that for the moment frees us from handed- down frames... of reference, memory choked with old facts and information and undigested theories and techniques of other people's findings. Spontaneity is the moment of personal freedom when we are faced with reality, and see it, explore it and act accordingly. In this reality the bits and pieces of ourselves function as an organic whole. It is the time of discovery, of experiencing, of creative expression.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you ...can fool all of the people all of the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A good performance, like a human life, is a temporal affair--a process in time. It is good as a whole through being good in its pa...rts, and through their good order to one another. It cannot be called good as a whole until it is finished. During the process all we can say of it, if we speak precisely, is that it is becoming good. The same is true of a whole human life. Just as the whole performance never exists at any one time, but is a process of becoming, so a human life is also a performance in time and a process of becoming. And just as the goodness that attaches to the performance as a whole does not attach to any of its parts, so the goodness of a human life as a whole belongs to it alone, and not to any of its parts or phases.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It was a time when only the dead smiled, happy in their peace.... ... Stars of Death stood over us, and innocent Russia squirmed under the bloody boots, under the wheels of black Marias.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem... From insignificance.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »