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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What is precious is never to forget, The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs, Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth; Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light, Nor its grave evening demand for love; Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother, With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
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All one can do is to achieve nakedness, to be what one is with all one's faculties and perceptions, strengthened by all the skill which one can acquire. And then to stand before the judgement of time.
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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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So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself
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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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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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Never being, but always at the edge of Being.
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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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Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
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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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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.