William Empson

Quotes

1. Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

   p. 37

2. 

   It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.

   The more things happen to you the more you can't

   Tell or remember even what they were.The contradictions cover such a range.

   The talk would talk and go so far aslant.

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

   p. 99

3. 

   Feign then what's by a decent tact believed

   And act that state is only so conceived,

   And build an edifice of form

   For house where phantoms may keep warm.

   p. 52

4. 

   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.

   p. 79

5. 

   It is the pain, it is the pain, endures.

   Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through.

   Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.

   p. 33

6. 

   Ripeness is all; her in her cooling planet

   Revere; do not presume to think her wasted.

   Project her no projectile, plan nor man it;

   Gods cool in turn, by the sun long outlasted.

   p. 24

7. 

   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.

   p. 34

8. 

   There is a supreme God in the ethnological section; . . . His smooth wood creeps with all the creeds of the world.

   p. 55

That’s all the quotes.

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