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" 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
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" 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
" 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 experiment is made on a basis of tradition; all tradition is the crystallization of experiment. "
Louis MacNeice
Experiment
Made
Basis
" I am at home in Dublin, more than in any other city. "
Louis MacNeice
Than
More
I Am
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Good poets have written in order to describe something or to preach something - with their eye on the object or the end. The essence of the poetry does not lie in the thing described or in the message imparted but in the resulting concrete unity, the poem. "
Louis MacNeice
Unity
Lie
Good
" 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
" Broadcasting is plastic; while it can ape the press, it can also emulate the arts. "
Louis MacNeice
Arts
Plastic
Press
" 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
" 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 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Prove
Admit
Communication
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Draft
Historical
Romance
" 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
" 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
" I am not yet born; O fill me with strength against those who would freeze my humanity. "
Louis MacNeice
Me
I Am
Humanity
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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. "
Louis MacNeice
Mutual
Malice
Her
" Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me, otherwise kill me. "
Louis MacNeice
Stone
Me
Otherwise
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Style without content is bad style. "
Louis MacNeice
Bad
Content
Style
" 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 do not envy any animal, though I envy many of their capacities. "
Louis MacNeice
Many
Envy
Though
" My sympathies are Left. On paper and in the soul. But not in my heart or my guts. "
Louis MacNeice
Paper
Left
Soul
" In writing 'A Portrait of Athens' I have attempted - rather impressionistically - to give a panorama of its present. But I have also brought in its past because I sincerely think that there is a continuity. "
Louis MacNeice
Think
Present
Portrait