A Quote by George William Curtis
Heroes in history seem to us poetic because they are there. But if we should tell the simple truth of some of our neighbors, it would sound like poetry.
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The terms of poetry - some simple, some complicated, some ancient, some new - should bring us closer to what we're hearing, enlarging our experience of it, enabling us to describe what we're reading, to feel and think with greater precision.
It occurs to me to wonder: do I believe in any god, or even positively not believe, as James does? I believe in systems and methods. I believe in the beauties of philosophy and poetry. I believe that the work we do and leave behind us is our afterlife; and I believe that history lies, but sometimes so well that I can't bring myself to resent it. I believe that truth is beauty, but not, I'm afraid, the reverse. It doesn't seem sufficient to sustain one in life's rigorous moments. Perhaps I shall embrace Islam. Its standards for poetry seem very high.
Our heroes are simple: they are brave, they tell the truth, they are good swordsmen and they are never in the long run really defeated. That is why no later books satisfy us like those which were read to us in childhood - for those promised a world of great simplicity of which we knew the rules, but the later books are complicated and contradictory with experience; they are formed out of our own disappointing memories.
A poet's object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.
We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.
I've got mixed feelings about poetry cause done well poetry is fantastic. But not many people are capable of doing it well. I think you should have some kind of license to perform poetry. A poetic license perhaps.
I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.
A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named.
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
I've written some poetry, but...songs have to be more poetic, and I've really gotten to this non-poetic sort of writing.
Part of the success of This American Life, I think, is due to the fact that none of us sound like we should be on the radio. We don't sound professional; we sound like people you would know.
Poetry; a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.
The Savior’s words are simple, yet their meaning is profound and deeply significant. We are to love God and to love and care for our neighbors as ourselves. Imagine what good we can do in the world if we all join together, united as followers of Christ, anxiously and busily responding to the needs of others and serving those around us — our families, our friends, our neighbors, our fellow citizens.
We should like to have some towering geniuses, to reveal us to ourselves in colour and fire, but of course they would have to fit into the pattern of our society and be able to take orders from sound administrative types.
The only people that ever stand up and tell the truth are who? Intelligence officers. Because our culture is, never break faith with the truth. We'll tell you, you don't have to drag it out of us.
France at the dinner table in faraway places; but here, among ourselves, in the family, let us face the facts: France is not poetic; to tell the truth, she even feels a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic.
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