A Quote by C. Day Lewis

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

C. Day Lewis

Quote Topics

Claim Earth Expresses Expression Good However Just May Pearl Poem Self Self-Expression Would

Quote Author

C. Day Lewis
English - Poet
April 27, 1904 - May 22, 1972

No good poem, however confessional it may be, is just a self-expression. Who on earth would claim that the pearl expresses the oyster?

C. S. Lewis

The most extraordinary thing about the oyster is this. Irritations set into his shell. He does not like them. But when he cannot get ride of them, he uses the irritation to do the loveliest thing an oyster ever has a chance to do. If there are irritations in our lives today, there is only one prescription: make a pearl. It may have to be a pearl of patience, but anyhow, make a pearl. And it takes faith and I love to do it.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

The world is your oyster. Yes, but in that oyster is the pearl; and to get to the pearl one has to first discard the shell and the flesh.

Ian Gardner

If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster shell.

John Bunyan

My role in life is that of the grain of sand to the oyster-it irritates the oyster and out comes a pearl.

Ross Perot

It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.

Stephen King

There is an honesty which is but decided selfishness in disguise. The person who will not refrain from expressing his or her sentiments and manifesting his or her feelings, however unfit the time, however inappropriate the place, however painful this expression may be, lays claim, forsooth, to our approbation as an honest person, and sneers at those of finer sensibilities as hypocrites.

Arthur Helps

I hate to sound self absorbed, but I'm just going to cast out this pearl of wisdom, if I could give the whole world cancer and kill them and be the last man on earth it would be a sign that god loves me especially.

Thom Yorke

When I feel something very intensely or deeply or personally, I can go to extremes of self-expression or self-analysis by writing a poem - more than I can just talking to somebody or writing prose.

Jimmy Carter

Within the oyster's shell uncouth The purest pearl may hide, Trust me you'll find a heart of truth Within that rough outside.

Frances Sargent Osgood

I hate the confessional. I love leaving the confessional. I hate going to the confessional. I would be a mess without it.

Lino Rulli

Everyone is so afraid of death, but the real sufis just laugh: nothing tyrannizes their hearts. What strikes the oyster shell does not damage the pearl

Rumi

We girls aren't supposed to fall for the good boys.We are supposed to like a bit of grit in our oyster.That's how you get a pearl, after all.

James Lovegrove

A successful poem says what a poet wants to say, and more, with particular finality. The remarks he makes about his poems are incidental when the poem is good, or embarrassing or absurd when it is bad and he is not permitted to say how the good poem is good, and may never know how the bad poem is bad. It is better to write about other people's poetry.