William Empson Quotes

Being everything, let us admit that is to be something, </br> Or give ourselves the benefit of the doubt; </br> Let us offer our pinch of dust all to this God, </br> And grant his reign over the entire building.

There is a supreme God in the ethnological section; ... </br> His smooth wood creeps with all the creeds of the world.

Attending there let us absorb the cultures of nations </br> And dissolve into our judgement all their codes. </br> Then, being clogged with a natural hesitation </br> (People are continually asking one the way out), </br> Let us stand here and admit that we have no road.

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.

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.

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.

The man writes with such genuine passion for the books he's discussing. With so many critics you feel they're writing so people will say they're good critics.

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

It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.
Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through.
Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

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.

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.

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

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.

An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means something very pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful....any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language.

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