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William Empson
25 quotes
“The waste even in a fortunate life, the isolation even of a life rich in intimacy, cannot but be felt deeply, and is the central feeling of tragedy. And anything of value must accept this because it must not prostitute itself; its strength is to be prepared to waste itself, if it does not get its opportunity.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935), p. 5
“To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Some Versions of Pastoral (London: Chatto & Windus, 1935), p. 15
“The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Milton's God (1961; repr. London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), p. 261
“An ambiguity, in ordinary speech, means something very pronounced, and as a rule witty or deceitful. . . . any verbal nuance, however slight, which gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a supreme God in the ethnological section; . . . His smooth wood creeps with all the creeds of the world.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Homage to the British Museum" (1935), stanza 1
“Attending there let us absorb the cultures of nations And dissolve into our judgement all their codes. Then, being clogged with a natural hesitation (People are continually asking one the way out), Let us stand here and admit that we have no road. Being everything, let us admit that is to be something, Or give ourselves the benefit of the doubt; Let us offer our pinch of dust all to this God, And grant his reign over the entire building.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man, as the prying housemaid of the soul.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1930 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: This Last Pain" (1930), line 5
“All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: To an Old Lady" (1928), stanza 1
“Stars how much further from me fill my night. Strange that she too should be inaccessible, Who shares my sun. He curtains her from sight, And but in darkness is she visible.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the pain, it is the pain, endures. Your chemic beauty burned my muscles through. Poise of my hands reminded me of yours.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Villanelle" (1928), line 1
“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.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Arachne" (1928), line 1
“Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1928 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Legal Fiction" (1928), line 1
“Your rights reach down where all owners meet, in Hell's Pointed exclusive conclave, at earth’s centre (Your spun farm's root still on that axis dwells); And up, through galaxies, a growing sector.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bacchus" (1935), note
“Hours before dawn we were woken by the quake. My house was on a cliff. The thing could take Bookloads off shelves, break bottles in a row. Then the long pause and then the bigger shake. It seemed the best thing to be up and go.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Aubade" (1937), line 1
“But as to risings, I can tell you why. It is on contradiction that they grow. It seemed the best thing to be up and go. Up was the heartening and the strong reply The heart of standing is we cannot fly.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Missing Dates" (1937), line 1
“Not to have fire is to be a skin that shrills.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend, Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end, Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend, Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Just a Smack at Auden" (1937), line 15
“Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ignorance of Death" (1940), line 3
“Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.”
William Empson (1906–1984) said by 1984 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Let It Go" (1949), line 1
“The fundamental situation, whether it deserves to be called ambiguous or not, is that a word or a grammatical structure is effective in several ways at once. To take a famous example, there is no pun, double syntax, or dubiety of feeling, in Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang, but the comparison holds for many reasons; because ruined monastery choirs are places in which to sing, because they involve sitting in a row, because they are made of wood, are carved into knots and so forth, because they used to be surrounded by a sheltering building crystallised out of the likeness of a forest, and coloured with stained glass and painting like flowers and leaves, because they are now abandoned by all but the grey walls coloured like the skies of winter, because the cold and Narcissistic charm suggested by choir-boys suits well with Shakespeare's feeling for the object of the Sonnets, and for various sociological and historical reasons (the protestant destruction of monasteries; fear of puritanism), which it would be hard now to trace out in their proportions; these reasons, and many more relating the simile to its place in the Sonnet, must all combine to give the line its beauty, and there is a sort of ambiguity in not knowing which of them to hold most clearly in mind. Clearly this is involved in all such richness and heightening of effect, and the machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.”
William Empson (1906–1984) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ch. I (2nd ed., 1949, pp. 2-3)