William Empson Quotes

#1. I'm afraid I take ... this rather clinical view of love: it's saving you from madness. I'm not so enthusiastic as other poets have been.

William Empson

#2. Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry

William Empson

#3. Poetry contains nothing haphazard.

William Empson

#4. You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.

William Empson

#5. 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?

William Empson

#6. Proust has listed a great many reasons why it is impossible to be happy, but, in the course of being happy, one finds it difficult to remember them.

William Empson

#7. Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.

William Empson

#8. 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.

William Empson

#9. This world is good enough for me, if only I can be good enough for it.

William Empson

#10. I think many people (like myself) prefer to read poetry mixed with prose;
it gives you more to go by; the conventions of poetry have been getting
far off from normal life, so that to have a prose bridge makes
reading poetry seem more natural.

William Empson

#11. The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.

William Empson

#12. 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

#13. 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

#14. It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.

William Empson

#15. Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

William Empson

#16. The difficult part of good temper consists in forbearance, and accommodation to the ill-humors of others.

William Empson

#17. My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.

William Empson

#18. The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.

William Empson

#19. Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.

William Empson

#20. The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

William Empson

#21. All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.

William Empson

#22. The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

William Empson

#23. 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.

William Empson