WILLIAM EMPSON

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

You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.

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.

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?

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.

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.

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.

Poetry contains nothing haphazard.

It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.

You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.

The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

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.

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.

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

The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.

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.

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.

Poetry contains nothing haphazard.

The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.

All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.

Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.