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" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Just
Birth
Mother
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" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Art
Reason
Poetry
" 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? "
Louis MacNeice
Meet
Value
Need
" I am more proud of what distinguishes man from the animals than of what he has in common with them. "
Louis MacNeice
I Am
Proud
More
" Democracy - or any improvement on it - will rest on the layman's right to criticize. His criticism will be often - very often - damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate. "
Louis MacNeice
Rest
Improvement
Democracy
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Poet
Always
Cannot
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Future
Doubt
Aesthetic
" 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). "
Louis MacNeice
Men
Thinking
Thank God
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Poetry
Language
Race
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Economics
Politics
Laughter
" I am at home in Dublin, more than in any other city. "
Louis MacNeice
Than
More
I Am
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Arts
Together
Music
" Broadcasting is plastic; while it can ape the press, it can also emulate the arts. "
Louis MacNeice
Arts
Plastic
Press
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Men
Experience
Hand
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Mind
Waiting
Revolution
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Number
Rules
More
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Animal
Unhappy
Nothing
" I am 33 years old, and what can I have been doing that I still am in a muddle? But everyone else is, too; maybe our muddles are concurrent. "
Louis MacNeice
Still
Doing
Everyone
" Nearly all children have a feeling for rhythm in words, for the delicate pattern of nursery rhymes. Many adults have lost this feeling and, if they read verse at all, demand a far cruder music than that which they once appreciated. "
Louis MacNeice
Lost
Children
Words
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Child
Garden
You
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
History
Hatred
Church
" We are all fed from hundreds and thousands of hands. Often we do not know whose they are nor how they work. Only a few of us ever visualize the hands that grope in the coal mines or push levers in the mills or handle axes in the lumber camp. "
Louis MacNeice
Handle
Hands
Know
" All the people I know have been conditioned by snobbery. "
Louis MacNeice
Been
Snobbery
People
" A harrassed and dubious childhood under the hand of a well-meaning but barbarous mother's help from County Armagh led me to think of the North of Ireland as prison and the South as a land of escape. "
Louis MacNeice
Me
Think
Land
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Without
Others
Poet
" In January 1921, I found myself wonderfully alone in an empty carriage in a rocking train in the night between Waterloo and Sherborne. Stars on each side of me; I ran from side to side of the carriage, checking the constellations. "
Louis MacNeice
Me
Train
Stars
" All experiment is made on a basis of tradition; all tradition is the crystallization of experiment. "
Louis MacNeice
Experiment
Made
Basis
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Voice
Water
Action
" Style without content is bad style. "
Louis MacNeice
Bad
Content
Style
" It is a retrogression when human beings begin to insist on uniform, on one-mindedness, on conditioning their offspring so that all their reactions are automatic. "
Louis MacNeice
Uniform
Begin
Human Beings
" Some day I shall write a novel and call it 'A Walking Tour in the Congo' or 'Thrills and Spills in Aeronautics'; but I keep this type of title as a last & mercenary resort. "
Louis MacNeice
Walking
Call
Keep