Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.
And New York is the most beautiful city in the world? It is not far from it. No urban night is like the night there... Squares after squares of flame, set up and cut into the aether. Here is our poetry, for we have pulled down the stars to our will.
Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
Either move or be moved.
Literature is news that stays news.
A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.
The image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
All great art is born of the metropolis.
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.
A civilized man is one who will give a serious answer to a serious question. Civilization itself is a certain sane balance of values.
When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.
I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.
The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
I have never known anyone worth a damn who wasn't irascible.
Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Any general statement is like a check drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art.
A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.
