The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him.
knowledge
The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we seeit is, rather, a light by which we may seeand what we see is life.
tso-life
A young man's ambition is to get along in the world and make a place for himself-half your life goes that way, till you're 45 or 50. Then, if you're lucky, you make terms with life, you get released.
ambitionyouth
For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
autobiographypoetryselfunderstanding
This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from the other events which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And only as we realize this do we live, for our own identity is dependent upon this principal.
evilidentityparadoxreality
I don't expect you'll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
expectationglorypoetrywriting
The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, Oh, just let me enjoy the poem.
poetstheend
The end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it, would save him.
The best luck always happens to people who don't need it.
fatehappenstanceluckneedprivilege
If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.
forgivenesshistoryoriginal-sin
The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist anymore, speaks a namewhich belongs to that non-existent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger.
friendship
Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.
historypoetrytheend
you live through . . . that little piece of time that is yours, but that piece of time is not only your own life, it is the summing-up of all the other lives that are simultaneous with yours. It is, in other words, History, and what you are is an expression of History.
historytime
History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.
history
The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.