Empson's Famous Quotes & Sayings
26 Empson's Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
Proust has listed a great many reasons why it is impossible to be happy, but, in the course of being happy, one finds it difficult to remember them.— William Empson
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.— William Empson
This world is good enough for me, if only I can be good enough for it.— William Empson
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.— William Empson
It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.— William Empson
The effect of reading literary non-fiction that matters most to me is when the coin drops, and this happens in the company of the great, mercuric, encyclopedic minds: Empson, Kenneth Burke, Northrop Frye.— Paul Fry
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.— William Empson
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.— William Empson
The difficult part of good temper consists in forbearance, and accommodation to the ill-humors of others.— William Empson
Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend, Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end, Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend, Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?— William Empson
All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.— William Empson
The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.— William Empson
Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.— William Empson
Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.— William Empson
Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves; Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems; Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.— William Empson
Poetry contains nothing haphazard.— William Empson
The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.— William Empson
I'm afraid I take ... this rather clinical view of love: it's saving you from madness. I'm not so enthusiastic as other poets have been.— William Empson
I think many people (like myself) prefer to read poetry mixed with prose;— William Empson
it gives you more to go by; the conventions of poetry have been getting
far off from normal life, so that to have a prose bridge makes
reading poetry seem more natural.
When Jesus went to his disciples on the evening of his resurrection, the first thing he said to them was, "Peace be with you." That has not changed. When you are in the presence of God, you are in a place of peace. Peace comes from the presence of someone who made you in love and keeps you in grace, someone you can count on to be with you in all things. When you are in God's presence, you are with one who knows you better than anyone does and who wants you to have the best life has to offer. In such a presence you have an inner calm that exceeds human understanding and measurement.— Lila Empson
My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.— William Empson
The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.— William Empson
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical.— William Empson
I would browse for half an hour or so in the secondhand bookstores in the neighborhood. Owning my own 'library' was my only materialistic ambition; in fact, trying to decide which two of these thousands of books to buy that week, I would frequently get so excited that by the time the purchase was accomplished I had to make use of the bookseller's toilet facilities. I don't believe that either microbe or laxative has ever affected me so strongly as the discovery that I was all at once the owner of a slightly soiled copy of Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity in the original English edition.— Philip Roth
Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetry— William Empson
To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.— William Empson
