Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure.

[Charles] Reznikoff was in between faiths, in between worlds... a double, hyphenated American. I think it probably goes deeper than that.

Pessimism negates the existing world. Yet its negating is ambiguous. It can simply will decay and nothingness, but it can also renounce what exists and thus open a path for a new formation of the world.

Criticism is the endeavour to find, to know, to love, to recommend, not only the best, but all the good, that has been known and thought and written in the world.

Poetry gives most pleasure when only generally and not perfectly understood.

I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all.

Things are really weird around here, and most of us don't know everything. Half of everything.

We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning.

That's what I love about poetry. The more abstract, the better. The stuff where you're not sure what the poet's talking about. You may have an idea, but you can't be sure. Not a hundred percent. Each word, specifically chosen, could have a million different meanings.

To like Keats is a test of fitness for understanding poetry, just as to like Shakespeare is a test of general mental capacity.

All lyrical work must, as a whole, be perfectly intelligible, but in some particulars a little unintelligible.

For nothing was simply one thing.

I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand.

Illegibility of this world. All things twice over. The strong clocks justify the splitting hour, hoarsely. You , clamped into your deepest part, climb out of yourself for ever.

It is clear that the world is purely parodic, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.

Animals see the unobstructed world with their whole eyes. But our eyes, turned back upon themselves, encircle and seek to snare the world, setting traps for freedom.

It was best to believe in all possibilities...there were more mysteries in the world than a man could ever hope to understand.

The hardest fact in the world to accept is the inevitable mixture of evil with good in all things.

I think the world is always improving and always not improving. I think that both are simultaneously happening all the time. I don't think it's one motion unfortunately - I wish we could say it's better, better, better - but I think it's better, bad, better, bad - you know?

I insist on knowing the names, on being interested only in books left ajar, like doors; I will not go looking for keys.

The world is full of contradiction.

The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

My worlds are complex, and often suggest more than one story.

In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.