Stephen Spender Quotes
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If you get to a certain age, all people want to know about you is people you knew. ...An American student once said to me, you know, isn't it extraordinary that I am alive and you're not dead.
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Deep in the winter plain, two armies Dig their machinery, to destroy each other. Men freeze and hunger. No one is given leave On either side, except the dead, and wounded.
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Paul Valery speaks of the 'une ligne donnee' of a poem. One line is given to the poet by God or by nature, the rest he has to discover for himself.
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All that you can imagine you already know.
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Sometimes when I am writing, I am aware of a rhythm, a dance, a fury, which is as yet empty of words.
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I think continually of those who were truly great...Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun, and left the vivid air signed with their honor.
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No one Shall hunger: Man shall spend equally. Our goal which we compel: Man shall be man.
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I think of those who were truly great. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
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So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself
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Never being, but always at the edge of Being.
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Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds, Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity. But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds, This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.
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Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
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Never allow gradually the traffic to smother with noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
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History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.