Stephen Spender quotes - page 3

Poetry cannot take sides except with life. (Stephen Spender)
The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre. Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour. View quote
Stephen Spender
I'm pressed into the inside of a mask At the back of love, the back of air, the back of light. View quote
Stephen Spender
The immediate reaction of the poets who fought in the war was cynicism... View quote
Stephen Spender
I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history Through corridors of light where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. View quote
Stephen Spender
What is precious is never to forget The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth. View quote
Stephen Spender
Of course, the entire effort is to put myself Outside the ordinary range Of what are called statistics. View quote
Stephen Spender
History is theirs whose language is the sun. View quote
Stephen Spender
The laurelled exiles, kneeling to kiss these sands. Number there freedom's friends. View quote
Stephen Spender
What the eye delights in, no longer dictates My greed to enjoy. View quote
Stephen Spender
Our dreams Poured into each other's arms, like streams. (Stephen Spender)
The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State. View quote
Stephen Spender
In railway halls, on pavements near the traffic, They beg, their eyes made big by empty staring And only measuring Time, like the blank clock. View quote
Stephen Spender
History has tongues Has angels has guns - has saved has praised - Today proclaims Achievements of her exiles long returned. View quote
Stephen Spender
Consider. One bullet in ten thousand kills a man. Ask. Was so much expenditure justified On the death of one so young and so silly Lying under the olive tree, O world, O death? View quote
Stephen Spender
I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. View quote
Stephen Spender
A poet can only write about what is true to his own experience, not about what he would like to be true to his experience. View quote
Stephen Spender
All the lessons learned, unlearned. View quote
Stephen Spender
Since we are what we are, what shall we be But what we are? View quote
Stephen Spender
The essential is That all the 'I's should remain separate Propped up under flowers, and no one suffer For his neighbour. Then horror is postponed For everyone until it settles on him And drags him to that incommunicable grief Which is all mystery or nothing. View quote
Stephen Spender
I came to see that within the struggle for a juster world, there is a further struggle between the individual who cares for long-term values and those who are willing to use any and every means to gain immediate political ends - even good ends. Within even a good social cause, there is a duty to fight for the pre-eminence of individual conscience. The public is necessary, but the private must not be abolished by it; and the individual must not be swallowed up by the concept of the social man. (Stephen Spender)
The poetic method sees the centre of consciousness as the point where all that is significant in the surrounding world becomes aware and transformed. View quote
Stephen Spender
Under the olive trees, from the ground Grows this flower, which is a wound. View quote
Stephen Spender
The spirit drinking timelessness; Touch, love, all senses. View quote
Stephen Spender
I am for neither West nor East, but for myself considered as a self - one of the millions who inhabit the earth... View quote
Stephen Spender