William Empson
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.Collection: Failure
My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.
Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.
It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.
The heart of standing is you cannot fly.
Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.
This world is good enough for me, if only I can be good enough for it.Collection: World
Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.Collection: Analysis
The machinations of ambiguity are among the very roots of poetry.Collection: Art
Proust has listed a great many reasons why it is impossible to be happy, but, in the course of being happy, one finds it difficult to remember them.Collection: Reason Why
The difficult part of good temper consists in forbearance, and accommodation to the ill-humors of others.Collection: Forbearance
Poetry contains nothing haphazard.Collection: Haphazard
All those large dreams by which men long live well Are magic-lanterned on the smoke of hell.Collection: Dream
To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.Collection: Art
The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.Collection: Heart
The central function of imaginative literature is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own.Collection: People
I'm afraid I take ... this rather clinical view of love: it's saving you from madness. I'm not so enthusiastic as other poets have been.Collection: Views
Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend, Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end, Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend, Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?Collection: Boys
Poets, on the face of it, have either got to be easier or to write their own notes; readers have either got to take more trouble over reading or cease to regard notes as pretentious and a sign of bad poetryCollection: Reading
Liberal hopefulness Regards death as a mere border to an improving picture.Collection: Borders
Twixt devil and deep sea, man hacks his caves; Birth, death; one, many; what is true, and seems; Earth's vast hot iron, cold space's empty waves.Collection: Men
Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical.Collection: Christian