Stephen Spender Quotes

We were obsessed by the feeling that this was the supreme cause of our time. The cause of poets and of writers. The cause of freedom. And that unless the cause of anti-Fascism was won, unless Fascism was defeated, we would be unable to exist as writers.

But reading is not idleness…it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is the immortal spirit of the dead realised within the bodies of the living. It is sacramental.

People sometimes divide others into those you laugh at and those you laugh with. The young Auden was someone you could laugh-at-with.

My brothers and sister and I were brought up in an atmosphere which I would describe as ‘Puritan decadence’. Puritanism names the behaviour which is condemned; Puritan decadence regards the name itself as indecent, and pretends that the object behind that name does not exist until it is named.

Poetry cannot take sides except with life.

The poet shares with other artists the faculty of seeing things as though for the first time.

The light in the window seemed perpetual Where you stayed in the high room for me.

Their collected Hearts wound up with love, like little watch springs.

Consider: only one bullet in ten thousand kills a man. Ask: was so much expenditure justified On the death of one so young and so silly Stretched under the olive trees, Oh, world, Oh, death?

Different living is not living in different places But creating in the mind a map.

Pylons, those pillars Bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret.

After the first powerful plain manifesto The black statement of pistons, without more fuss, But gliding like a queen, she leaves the station.

Who live under the shadow of war, What can I do that matters?

My parents kept me from children who were rough Who threw words like stones and who wore torn clothes.

Never being, but always at the edge of Being.

They lounge at corners of the street And greet friends with a shrug of shoulder And turn their pockets out, The cynical gestures of the poor.

For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust.

What I had not foreseen Was the gradual day Weakening the will Leaking the brightness away.

The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre. Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun, And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

I think continually of those who were truly great.