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Quote by Archibald MacLeish

Work

Collected Poems, 1917-1982

This volume compiles a selection of poems written over a sixty-five year period, showcasing the author's evolution as a poet throughout their career. more

Author

Archibald MacLeish
Archibald MacLeish

Archibald MacLeish was an American poet, playwright, and government official, born on May 7, 1892, and died on April 20, 1982. His poetry often addressed social and political issues, and he made significant contributions to both poetry and drama. more

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“Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but giving up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. You are as young as your faith and as old as your doubts; as young as you self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.”

“I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy." Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.”

“Being established in my life, buttressed by my thinking nature, fastened down in this transcendental field which was opened for me by my first perception, and in which all absence is merely the obverse of a presence, all silence a modality of the being of sound, I enjoy a sort of ubiquity and theoretical eternity, I feel destined to move in a flow of endless life, neither the beginning nor the end of which I can experience in thought, since it is my living self who think of them, and since thus my life always precedes and survives itself.”