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Function Quotes

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Function Quotes

“There are no mute, inglorious Miltons, save in the hallucinations of poets. The one sound test of a Milton is that he functions as a Milton.”

Sound Poet Tests Function Mute Hallucinations Milton

Author:H. L. Mencken

“Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe. I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul.”

Thinking Humans Art Soul Conditions Poet Scientist Function Awe Tribes Good Art Astonishment Good Science

Author:Derek Walcott

“If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a good poet without first being a good man.”

Ifs Men Firsts Looks Poet Office Function Good Man Impossibility

Book:Volpone

Source: Volpone

“Poetry, at all times, exercises two distinct functions: it may reveal, it may unveil to every eye, the ideal aspects of common thingsor it may actually add to the number of motives poetic and uncommon in themselves, by the imaginative creation of things that are ideal from their very birth.”

May Two Eye Poetry Imagination Common Numbers Creativity Creation Poet Birth Exercise Aspect Ideals Function Add All Time Motive Poetic Imaginative Uncommon

Author:Walter Pater

“The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.”

People Mind Helping Light Imagination Roles Poet Function

Book:The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

Source: The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination

“One can say that the disaffection is still a lingering naiveté about, not the place of poetry in the world, but - how to say this - the moral and intellectual presence of poets in the world. And while this may seem an old conversation to many poets who roll their eyes and say, "Here we go again about the function of poetry," I think that conversation, about poetry as an engaged art in a world that is full of regression or still lacking in progress, is still really not well-developed. It's almost an avoided conversation.”

Thinking World Wells May Art Stills Seems Eye Moral Progress Poet Conversation Intellectual Function Engaged Lacking Avoided Lingering Regression Here We Go Again

Author:Fady Joudah

“How does the artist function as poet-slash-witness-slash-trickster?”

Doe Artist Poet Function Witness Tricksters

Author:Kehinde Wiley

“I try to write lyrics that will be able to function on their own if they get separated from the music. But I wouldn't want to take anything away from poets, who work without the frames songwriters get from melody, and I think lyrics should be considered as their own thing.”

Ifs Thinking Want Should Writing Trying Able Poet Function Melody Songwriters

Author:John K. Samson

“You can't argue with someone who believes, or just passionately suspects, that the poet's function is not to write what he must write but, rather, to write what he would write if his life depended on his taking responsibility for writing what he must in a style designed to shut out as few of his old librarians as humanly possible.”

Ifs Writing Believe Responsibility Style Poet Function Arguing Suspects Taking Responsibility Librarian

Author:J. D. Salinger

“The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.”

Source: The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud

“I think the poet is the last person who is still speaking the truth when no one else dares to. I think the poet is the first person to begin the shaping and visioning of the new forms and the new consciousness when no one else has begun to sense it; I think these are two of the most essential human functions.”

“Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function.”

Ifs Literature Goal Alive Imagine Poet Achievement Tasks Function Remains Dare

Book:Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Source: Six Memos for the Next Millennium