Stephen Spender Quotes
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Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.
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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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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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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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One type of concentration is immediate and complete, as it was with Mozart. The other is plodding and only completed in stages, as with Beethoven. Thus genius works in different ways to achieve its ends.
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Death to the killers, bringing light to life.
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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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All that you can imagine you already know.
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Never allow gradually the traffic to smother with noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.
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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 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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History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.