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" All experiment is made on a basis of tradition; all tradition is the crystallization of experiment. "

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" I do not envy any animal, though I envy many of their capacities. "

" Style without content is bad style. "

" The individualist is an atom thinking about himself (Thank God I am not as other men); the communist, too often, is an atom having ecstasies of self-denial (Thank God I am one in a crowd). "

" Mysticism, in the narrow sense, implies a specific experience which is foreign to most poets and most men, but on the other hand, it represents an instinct which is a human sine qua non. "

" The teapot takes in water and gives out tea. So the human individual takes in anything you give him and promptly transforms it; he is ready to give you out again his own reactions - first, in thought and emotion, then in voice or action. "

" Broadcasting is plastic; while it can ape the press, it can also emulate the arts. "

" The poet has no greater number of muscles than the ordinary conversationalist; he merely has more highly developed muscles and better coordination. And he practises his activity according to a stricter set of rules. "

" My sympathies are Left. On paper and in the soul. But not in my heart or my guts. "

" My stepmother appeared when I was about 9. My brother was sent off to an institute in Scotland & my sister & I were sent to school. As my stepmother's ideas were then wholly Quaker, mixed with a naive & charming innocence & a little snobbery, it was one dotty epoch on top of another. I always remained terrified of my father. "

" Everyone is not able, or inclined, to write poetry in the narrower sense any more than everyone is qualified to take part in a walking race. But just as all of us can and do walk, so all of us can and do use language poetically. "

" As things may turn out in the future, people may (though I doubt it) find that their work gives them all the enjoyment - physical, intellectual or aesthetic - which they may require. That certainly is not so now. "

" Before I joined the BBC I was, like most of the intelligentsia, prejudiced not only against that institution but against broadcasting in general. "

" I am more proud of what distinguishes man from the animals than of what he has in common with them. "

" My birth was managed so rottenly that my mother had eventually to have a hysterectomy, after which she was ill off & on till she dies for obscure reasons when I was just 7. "

" Though I do regard the Inquisition in general and the burning of Giordano Bruno in particular as blots on the history of the Roman Catholic Church, I am far from being actuated by hatred of that church, and in fact cannot imagine that European civilization would have developed or survived without it. "

" All the arts, to varying degrees, involve some kind of a compromise. This being so, how far need the radio dramatist go to meet the public without losing sight of himself and his own standards of value? "

" I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity. "

" The poet is primarily a spokesman, making statements or incantations on behalf of himself or others - usually for both, for it is difficult to speak for oneself without speaking for others or to speak for others without speaking for oneself. "

" For this reason poets and artists developed the doctrine of Art for Art's Sake. The community did not appear to need them, so, tit for tat, they did not need the community. This being granted, it was no longer necessary or even desirable to make one's poetry either intelligible or sympathetic to the community. "

" I would have a poet able bodied, fond of talking, a reader of the newspapers, capable of pity and laughter, informed in economics, appreciative of women, involved in personal relationships, actively interested in politics, susceptible to physical impressions. "

" When I went to bed as a child, I was told, 'You don't know where you'll wake up.' When I ran in the garden, I was told that running was bad for the heart. Everything had its sinister aspect - milk shrinks the stomach, lemon thins the blood. "

" Nationalism of the Irish type is often regarded as reactionary. With the World Revolution and the Classless Society waiting for the midwife, why take a torch to the stable to assist at the birth of a puppy? Even if the puppy is pedigree. On this question I am unable to make up my mind. "

" Dublin was hardly worried by the war; her old preoccupations were still preoccupations. The intelligentsia continued their parties; their mutual malice was as effervescent as ever. "

" The poet is a specialist in something which everyone practises. Herein, poetry differs from the other arts. Everyone does not practise music or painting or even dancing, but everyone without exception puts together words poetically every day of his life. "

" I have just finished my novel (rough draft). It is to be called 'Anacoluthon.' This will make the public think it is an historical romance. "

" I am at home in Dublin, more than in any other city. "

" I would admit that poetry is something more than mere communication and that if that 'something more' could be abstracted from the whole, it might well prove to be that which makes the whole a poem. "

" Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, otherwise kill me. "

" A poet should always be 'collaborating' with his public, but this public, in the mass, cannot make itself heard, and he has to guess at its requirements and its criticisms. "

" Man is an unhappy animal and one that can talk. If he was not unhappy, he would have nothing to talk about. But if he had nothing to talk about, he would be unhappy. "