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His poetry, so wonderful when it is really flying, isn’t trying to tell you how much he knows. It’s giving thanks for how much there is to be known.

— Clive James

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Poetry

More quotes by Clive James

The sure sign of a weak man who ascends to glory is that he can't tolerate having strong men around him.

North Face of Soho (2006)

Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.

Glued to the Box (1983)

Beyond a certain point - and that point is reached early - precision is what expressiveness depends on.

One of [Mann's] many reasons for hating the Third Reich was that it forced him to be a better man than he really was.

Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time (2007)

If it feels like a mistake before you go in, don't go in.

North Face of Soho (2006)

All Clive James quotes →

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

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