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When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes,
I was your son, high on your horse,
My mind a top whipped by the lashes
Of your rhetoric, windy of course.

— Stephen Spender

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More quotes by Stephen Spender

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.

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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: Stephen Spender (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.