Stephen Spender Quotes

Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

Who writes poetry imbibes honey from the poisoned lips of life.

Every artist is an artist, and every heartbeat is a heartbeat.

Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief - everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.

If you're rich, you can leave a library, a building, or a hospital wing. But writing leaves behind a visceral sense of what it was like to be alive on the planet in a particular time. Writing tells us what it meant for someone to be human.

Art is by nature optimistic. Art is optimistic because it is alive.

Literature is the voice of the human heart.

I find I cannot exist without Poetry

Photography is nothing-it's life that interests me.

There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes.

I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.

What would life be without art? Science prolongs life. To consist of what-eating, drinking, and sleeping? What is the good of living longer if it is only a matter of satisfying the requirements that sustain life? All this is nothing without the charm of art.

Poetry will exist as long as there is a problem of life and death

Poetry contains almost all you need to know about life.

Poetry is like air. It's one of the necessary things. Everyone benefits from poetry. And as you know, poetry is international. There are only two things that are truly international, poetry and wine.

Creating means living.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.

Poetry is a response to the daily necessity of getting the world right.

Poetry is the attempt which man makes to render his existence harmonious.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being.

Poetry is not truth, it is the resurrection of presences.

I write because to write a new sentence, let alone a new poem, is to cross the threshold into both a larger existence and a profound mystery. A thought was not there, then it is. An image, a story, an idea about what it is to be human, did not exist, then it does. With every new poem, an emotion new to the heart, to the world, speaks itself into being.