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Ivor A. Richards Quotes

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“1)In the simplest formulation, when we use a metaphor we have two thoughts of different things active together and supported by a single word, or phrase, whose meaning is a resultant of their interaction." ~ I. A. Richards 2)We believe a scientist because he can substantiate his remarks, not because he is eloquent and forcible in his enunciation. In fact, we distrust him when he seems to be influencing us by his manner. 3)Contempt is a well-recognized defensive reaction. 4)It is never what a poem says that matters, but what it is. 5)Thought is metaphoric, and proceeds by comparison, and the metaphors of language derive therefrom. I. A. Richards”

Thought
Author:Ivor A. Richards
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“Our mother tongue, so far ahead of me, Displays her goods, hints at each bond and link, Provides the means, leaves it to us to think, Proffers the possibles, balanced mutually, To be used or not, as our designs elect, To be tried out, taken up or in or on, Scrapped or transformed past recognition, Though she sustains, she’s too wise to direct. Ineffably regenerative, how does she know So much more than we can? How hold such store For our recovery, for what must come before Our instauration, that future we will owe To what? To whom? To countless of our kind, Who, tending meanings, grew Man’s unknown Mind.”

PoetryHistoryTraditionConvention
Author:Ivor A. Richards
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“Our skill with metaphor, with thought, is one thing — prodigious and inexplicable; our reflective awareness of that skill is quite another thing— very incomplete, distorted, fallacious, over-simplifying. Its business is not to replace practice, or to tell us how to do what we cannot do already; but to protect our natural skill from the interferences of unnecessarily crude views about it; and, above, all, to assist the imparting of that skill — that command of metaphor — from mind to mind. And progress here, in translating our skill into observation and theory, comes chiefly from profiting by our mistakes.”

Mistakes
Book:The Philosophy of Rhetoric
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