Skip to content

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

— William Empson

Another quote →

Topics

Dreams

More quotes by William Empson

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

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

Legal Fiction (1928)

Man, as the prying housemaid of the soul.

This Last Pain (1930)

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

Homage to the British Museum (1935)

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

Bacchus (1935)

All William Empson quotes →

You may also like

Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.

Henry Miller My Bike & Other Friends (1977)

Utu, shepherd of the land, father of the black-headed, when you go to sleep, the people go to sleep with you; youth Utu, when you rise, the people rise with you.

Lugalbanda

Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me.

L. Frank Baum Introduction to The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification.

Simone Weil

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Empson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.