William Empson Quotes

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

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

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

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

The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.

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.

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

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

Poetry contains nothing haphazard.

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

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end. What is there to be or do? What's become of me or you? Are we kind or are we true? Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.

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.