A Quote by William Rounseville Alger

Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature.

William Rounseville Alger

Quote Topics

English Literature Natural Poetry Poetry Is Religion Says

Quote Author

William Rounseville Alger
American - Author
1822 - 1905

The English tourist in American literature wants above all things something different from what he has at home. For this reason the one American writer whom the English whole-heartedly admire is Walt Whitman. There, you will hear them say, is the real American undisguised. In the whole of English literature there is no figure which resembles his - among all our poetry none in the least comparable to Leaves of Grass

Virginia Woolf

I didn't ever consider poetry the province exclusively of English and American literature and I discovered a great amount in reading Polish poetry and other Eastern European poetry and reading Russian poetry and reading Latin American and Spanish poetry and I've always found models in those other poetries of poets who could help me on my path.

Edward Hirsch

I studied English literature; I took 2 independent religion classes, but I wasn't a religion major really.

Maggie Gyllenhaal

The cliché is dead poetry. English, being the language of an imaginative race, abounds in clichés, so that English literature is always in danger of being poisoned by its own secretions.

Gerald Brenan

Poetry has an indirect way of hinting at things. Poetry is feminine. Prose is masculine. Prose, the very structure of it, is logical; poetry is basically illogical. Prose has to be clear-cut; poetry has to be vague - that's its beauty, its quality. Prose simply says what it says; poetry says many things. Prose is needed in the day-to-day world, in the marketplace. But whenever something of the heart has to be said, prose is always found inadequate - one has to fall back to poetry.

Rajneesh

That love is a conflict seems to me obvious and natural. There isn't a single worthwhile work in world literature based on love that is only about the conquest of happiness, the effort to arrive at what we call love. It's the struggle that has always interested those who produce works of art - literature, cinema or poetry.

Michelangelo Antonioni

Christopher Hitchens is the greatest living essayist in the English language.

Christopher Buckley

Some people think that English poetry begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poetry and those established in English poetry by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway, Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learned.

James Fenton

You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.

Richard Dawkins

I'm the happiest combination you can think of. I'm a Russian poet, an English essayist, and a citizen of the United States.

Joseph Brodsky

It is a curious fact that the word essayist showed up in English before it existed in French.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

It is a curious fact that the word 'essayist' showed up in English before it existed in French.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

I often imagine that the longer he studies English literature the more the Japanese student must be astonished at the extraordinary predominance given to the passion of love both in fiction and in poetry.

Lafcadio Hearn

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit.... But though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not transcendent poetry.For picturesque description of persons it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is.

Henry David Thoreau

English is, from my point of view as an Americanist, an ethnicity. And English literature should be studied in Comparative Literature. And American literature should be a discipline, certainly growing from England and France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, and the Native traditions, particularly because those helped form the American canon. Those are our backgrounds. And then we'd be doing it the way it ought to be done. And someday I hope that it will be.

Paula Gunn Allen

Just because I've extricated myself from religion doesn't mean I'm not interested in the scriptures. I look at the Bible as itself. It's a holy book, it has incredible literature in it and beautiful poetry.

Patti Smith

A Quote by William Rounseville Alger

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors