Top 25 Quotes by Stephen Spender of 62 - Page 3

Of course, the entire effort is to put myself Outside the ordinary range Of what are called statistics. A hundred are killed In the outer suburbs. Well, well, I carry on.

Of course, the entire effort is to put myself Outside the ordinary range Of what are called statistics. A hundred are killed In the outer suburbs. Well, well, I carry on.

Stephen Spender

Effort, Ordinary, Statistics

Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.151, Faber & Faber

Religion stands, the Church blocking the sun.

Stephen Spender

Block, Religion, Church

Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.47, Faber & Faber

Involved in my own entrails and a crust Turning a pitted surface towards a space, I am a world that watches through a sky And is persuaded by mirrors To regard its being as an external shell, One of a universe of stars and faces.

Stephen Spender

Stars, Sky, Space

Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.189, Faber & Faber

What the eye delights in, no longer dictates My greed to enjoy: boys, grass, the fenced-off deer. It leaves those figures that distantly play On the horizon's rim: they sign their peace, in games.

Stephen Spender

Eye, Boys, Games

Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.135, Faber & Faber

To break out of the chaos of my darkness Into a lucid day is all my will. My words like eyes in night, stare to reach A centre for their light: and my acts thrown To distant places by impatient violence Yet lock together to mould a path of stone Out of my darkness into a lucid day.

Stephen Spender

Eye, Night, Light

Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press

My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse And shut upon obscurity; my acts Cast to their opposites by impatient violence Break up the sequent path; they fly On a circumference to avoid the centre.

Stephen Spender

Eye, Light, Opposites

Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press

Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds, Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity. But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds, This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends.

Stephen Spender

Clouds, Soul, Despair

"Poems (In Railway Halls, on Pavements Near the Traffic)". Book by Stephen Spender, 1933.

My uncle was famous for his balanced point of view. At the time of which I am writing (when he was nearly seventy) it had become so balanced, that the act of balancing seemed rather automatic.One had only to offer him an opinion for him to balance it with a counter- opinion of exactly the same weight, as a grocer puts a pound weight against a pound of sugar.

Stephen Spender

Uncles, Writing, Views

1951 World within World, p.77.

All the posters on the walls All the leaflets in the streets Are mutilated, destroyed or run in rain, Their words blotted out with tears, Skins peeling from their bodies In the victorious hurricane.

Stephen Spender

Running, Wall, Rain

Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.165, Faber & Faber

You drive the landscape like a herd of clouds Moving against your horizontal tower Of steadfast speed. All England lies beneath you like a woman With limbs ravished By one glance carrying all these eyes.

Stephen Spender

Lying, Moving, Eye

Stephen Spender (2015). “New Collected Poems of Stephen Spender”, p.153, Faber & Faber

When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.

Stephen Spender

Fathers Day, Dream, Horse

The iron arc of the avoiding journey Curves back upon my weakness at the end; Whether the faint light spark against my face Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight, Centre and circumference are both my weakness.

Stephen Spender

Dark, Journey, Light

Stephen Spender (1966). “World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender”, p.5, Univ of California Press