"Venus knows country matters: country knows Venus: For Love, Dione's boy, was born on the farm."
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Quote collection
Allen Tate quotes (page 2 of 4)
79 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form."
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"What is the flesh and blood compounded ofBut a few moments in the life of time?This prowling of the cells, litigious love,Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime."
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"Row after row with strict impunity The headstones yield their names to the element, The wind whirrs without recollection."
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"Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values."
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"There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago."
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"The Spring I seek is in a new face only."
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"So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman."
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"Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them."
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"But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly."
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"POET If not in a place, where are the People weeping? LIBERAL They creep weeping in the face, not place. POET Is it something with which we may cope The weeping, the creeping, the peepee-ing, the peeping?"
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"Antiquity breached mortality with myths. Narcissus is vocabulary. Hermes decorates A cornice on the Third National Bank."
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"The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem."
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"Men expect too much, do too little, Put the contraption before the accomplishment, Lack skill of the interior mind To fashion dignity with shapes of air. Luxury, yes but not elegance!"
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"There's precious little to say between day and dark, Perhaps a few words on the implacable will Of time sailing like a magic barque Or something as fine for the amenities."
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"The poet is he who fights on the passionate Side and whoever loses he wins; when he Is defeated it is hard to say who wins."
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"We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying."
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"The idiot greens the meadow with his eyes, The meadow creeps implacable and still; A dog barks, the hammock swings, he lies. One two three the cows bulge on the hill."
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"What was I saying? An Egyptian king Once touched long fingers, which are not anything."
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"And I have seen long fingers that would stare With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl Deftly across the counterpane and fall Soundless, with a wink of mild despair."
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