A Quote by William Bolitho

The profession of magician, is one of the most perilous and arduous specializations of the imagination. On the one hand there is the hostility of God and the police to be guarded against; on the other it is as difficult as music, as deep as poetry, as ingenious as stage-craft, as nervous as the manufacture of high explosives, and as delicate as the trade in narcotics.

William Bolitho

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Against Arduous Craft Deep Delicate Difficult Explosives God Guarded Hand High Hostility Imagination Ingenious Magician Most Music Narcotics Nervous Other Perilous Poetry Police Profession Stage Trade

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William Bolitho
Author
1890 - 1930

We are difficult. Human beings are difficult. We're difficult to ourselves, we're difficult to each other. And we are mysteries to ourselves, we are mysteries to each other. One encounters in any ordinary day far more real difficulty than one confronts in the most “intellectual” piece of work. Why is it believed that poetry, prose, painting, music should be less than we are? Why does music, why does poetry have to address us in simplified terms, when if such simplification were applied to a description of our own inner selves we would find it demeaning?

Geoffrey Hill

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives.

Tallulah Bankhead

Poetry and music are the best at the highest level of the human mind. Out of poetry, out of their need for poetry, human beings have developed the idea of God. And so when we sing, when we dance, when we speak poetry we are speaking out of God's mouth, each other out of the music from God's heart.

Maya Angelou

Homosexuals are delicate and bad poetry is delicate and [Allen] Ginsberg turned the tables by making homosexual poetry strong poetry, almost manly poetry; but in the long run, the homo will remain the homo and not the poet.

Charles Bukowski

Writers need to learn their trade, and how to negotiate the increasingly difficult marketplace. The trade can be taught and learned just as the craft can. But a workshop where the trade is the principal focus of interest is not a writing workshop. It is a business class.

Ursula K. Le Guin

It's so much more difficult to get police officers to testify against other police officers.

Dan Donovan

The duties which a police officer owes to the state are of a most exacting nature. No one is compelled to choose the profession ofa police officer, but having chosen it, everyone is obliged to live up to the standard of its requirements. To join in that high enterprise means the surrender of much individual freedom.

Calvin Coolidge

We must hold a man amenable to reason for the choice of his daily craft or profession. It is not an excuse any longer for his deeds that they are the custom of his trade. What business has he with an evil trade?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For many of the most powerful people in the entertainment business, hostility to organized religion goes so deep and burns so intensely that they insist on expressing that hostility, even at the risk of financial disaster.

Michael Medved

Now, I do say, "It's possible. You might be the first. I'm not saying it's impossible, but the odds are very much against you." All great poets have been great readers and the way to learn your craft in poetry is by reading other poetry and by letting it guide you.

Edward Hirsch

The Dance can, with the aid of music, rise to the heights of poetry. On the other hand, through an excess of gymnastics it can also degenerate into buffoonery. So-called "difficult" feats can be executed by countless adepts, but the appearance of ease is achieved only by the chosen few.

August Bournonville

Poetry is music though, unfortunately, not all music is poetry. Because music has other carriers to take its message - beats, lyrics, singers, bass players - anyone in music can rise to make a major statement but in poetry there are only words to do the work. And they do sometimes have to sweat.

Nikki Giovanni

Great writers zealously learn the craft of their profession so they can release the power and the depth of their imagination and experience.

Leonard Bishop

Poetry finds its perilous equilibrium somewhere between music and speech.

May Sarton

... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ... ... if you demand on one hand, the raw material of poetry in all its rawness and that which is on the other hand genuine, then you are interested in poetry.

Marianne Moore

Police have to have one of the most difficult jobs in society today. But at the same time, I think, a person in that position - their responsibility has to be high as well.

Larry Wilmore

A Quote by William Bolitho

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