William Empson quotes

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills. (William Empson)
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men. View quote
William Empson
It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows. View quote
William Empson
The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own. View quote
William Empson
All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell. View quote
William Empson
To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public. View quote
William Empson
Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend, Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end, Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend, Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end? View quote
William Empson
Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves; Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems; Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves. View quote
William Empson
Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis. View quote
William Empson
Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture. View quote
William Empson
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical. (William Empson)
My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you. View quote
William Empson
Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end. View quote
William Empson
Feign then what's by a decent tact believed And act that state is only so conceived, And build an edifice of form For house where phantoms may keep warm. View quote
William Empson
The waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation even of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get its opportunity. View quote
William Empson
Ripeness is all; her in her cooling planet Revere; do not presume to think her wasted. Project her no projectile, plan nor man it; Gods cool in turn, by the sun long outlasted. View quote
William Empson
Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake. My house was on a cliff. The thing could take Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row. Then the long pause and then the bigger shake. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. View quote
William Empson
It is the pain, it is the pain, endures. Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through. Poise of my hands reminded me of yours. View quote
William Empson
The plain fact is that many of the reputations which today occupy the poetic limelight are such as would crumble immediately if poetry such as Empson's, with its passion, logic, and formal beauty, were to become widely known. View quote
William Empson
Man, as the prying housemaid of the soul. View quote
William Empson
Johnson, Hazlitt and Empson are the greatest English critics of their respective centuries not least because they are the funniest. (William Empson)
p>It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange. The more things happen to you the more you can't Tell or remember even what they were.The contradictions cover such a range. The talk would talk and go so far aslant. You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there. View quote
William Empson
Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills. View quote
William Empson
Attending there let us absorb the cultures of nations And dissolve into our judgement all their codes. Then, being clogged with a natural hesitation (People are continually asking one the way out), Let us stand here and admit that we have no road. View quote
William Empson
But as to risings, I can tell you why. It is on contradiction that they grow. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. Up was the heartening and the strong reply The heart of standing is we cannot fly. View quote
William Empson