There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

There is probably nothing wrong with art for art's sake if we take the phrase seriously, and not take it to mean the kind of poetry written in England forty years ago.

But in our age the appeal to authority is weak, and I am of my age.

So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.

The Spring I seek is in a new face only.

Religion is the sole technique for the validating of values.

Genetic theories, I gather, have been cherished academically with detachment.

At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor; at twenty not to shoot at all; I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary.

Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically; even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history.

Other psychological theories say a good deal about compensation.

The mission for the day is to encourage students to think beyond traditional career opportunities, prepare for future careers and entrance into the workplace.

I believe the term modulation denotes in music the uninterrupted shift from one key to another: I do not know the term for change of rhythm without change of measure.

Men expect too much, do too little.

What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.

How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.

Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.

We know the particular poem, not what it says that we can restate.

For some reason most critics have a hard time fixing their minds directly under their noses, and before they see the object that is there they use a telescope upon the horizon to see where it came from.

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.

Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.

Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.

A poem may be an instance of morality, of social conditions, of psychological history; it may instance all its qualities, but never one of them alone, nor any two or three; never less than all.

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.

According to its doctors, my one intransigent desire is to have been a Confederate general, and because I could not or would not become anything else, I set up for poet and beg an to invent fictions about the personal ambitions that my society has no use for.

I am not ridiculing verbal mechanisms, dreams, or repressions as origins of poetry; all three of them and more besides may have a great deal to do with it.

The innocent mansion of a panther's heart!

The dusk runs down the lane driven like hail Far off a precise whistle is escheat To the dark and then the towering weak and pale.

There is a calm for you where men and women Unroll the chill precision of moving feet.

The dreary flies lazy and casual Stick to the ceiling buzz along the wall. O heart the spider shuffles from the mould Weaving between the pinks and grapes his pall.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art.

My art became very public.

Riding a race bike is an art - a thing that you do because you feel something inside.

The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?

But in the finished art of the song the use of words has no connection with the use of words in poetry.

One does not need buildings, money, power, or status to practice the Art of Peace. Heaven is right where you are standing, and that is the place to train.

I don't believe in art. I believe in artists.

Art cannot be modern. Art is primordially eternal.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

We have often been attracted to the story of the other, the outcast. And he and I just loved working together, so it just kept happening, and our relationship is completely bound up with our work. We enjoy each other's art.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

At the University of Maryland, my first year I started off planning to major in art because I was interested in theatre design, stage design or television design.

Art is an expression of who you are. Parts that I play are my sculptures.

There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population.