Stephen Spender Quotes

1909–1995 England

Stephen Spender (February 28, 1909 – July 16, 1995) was an English poet and essayist who focused on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work.

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Random Stephen Spender quote

64 quotes

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

After the first powerful plain manifesto
The black statement of pistons, without more fuss
But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.

History is theirs whose language is the sun.

Ruins and Visions (1942)

The ultimate aim of politics is not politics, but the activities which can be practised within the political framework of the State.

Life and the Poet (1942)

At dawn she lay with her profile at that angle
Which, when she sleeps, seems the carved face of an angel.

I'm struggling at the end to get out of the valley of hectoring youth, journalistic middle age, imposture, moneymaking, public relations, bad writing, mental confusion.

On turning 70 in Journals 1939-83 (1986)

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.

The Still Centre (1939)

They think how one life hums, revolves and toils,
One cog in a golden singing hive...

Whatever happens, I shall never be alone,
I shall always have a fare, an affair, or a revolution.

The Still Centre (1939)

Death to the killers, bringing light to life.

Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Poems (1933)

I'm pressed into the inside of a mask
At the back of love, the back of air, the back of light.

The Still Centre (1939)

Of course, the entire effort is to put myself
Outside the ordinary range
Of what are called statistics. A hundred are killed
In the outer suburbs. Well, well, I carry on.

The Still Centre (1939)

History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

Peter's Quotations : Ideas for Our Times (1993)

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.

Poems (1933)

Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds
Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity.
But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds
This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.

Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.
Like rootless weeds the torn hair round their paleness.

Ruins and Visions (1942)

There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife — a tyrannical midwife.

I say, stamping the words with emphasis,
Drink from here energy and only energy

My single pair of eyes
Contain the universe they see;
Their mirrored multiplicity
Is packed into a hollow body
Where I reflect the many, in my one.

The Still Centre (1939)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Stephen Spender (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.