Herbert Read Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.

  Herbert Read

  Adults, Problem, Forget

  Herbert Read (1963). “Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism”

  13 Copy quote

• The depths modern art has been exploring are mysterious depths, full of strange fish.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Depth, Strange

  5 Copy quote

• The greatest intensification of the horrors of war is a direct result of the democratisation of the State. So long as the army was a professional unit, the specialist function of a limited number of men, war remained a relatively harmless contest for power. But once it became everyman's duty to defend his home (or his political “rights”) warfare was free to range wherever that home might be, and to attack every form of life and property associated with that home.

  Herbert Read

  Military, War, Home

  10 Copy quote

• The modern work of art, as I have said, is a symbol.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Literature, Modern

  Herbert Read (1971). “The Philosophy of Modern Art: Collected Essays”, Books for Libraries

  14 Copy quote

• Progress is measured by the degree of differentiation within a society.

  Herbert Read

  Progress, Degrees, Differentiation

  Sir Herbert Edward Read (1964). “Selected writings: poetry and criticism”

  7 Copy quote

• To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

  Herbert Read

  Equality, Literature, World

  Herbert Read (1963). “Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism”

  7 Copy quote

• An enormous amount of art and literature is erotic in the sense that it stimulates vague sexual emotions, but it has no pornographic intention or effect because "it leaves everything to the imagination." The consumer has to invent his own images, and it is felt, I do not know with what justification, that there is no harm in this.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Imagination, Erotic

  Herbert Read (2005). “To Hell With Culture”, p.152, Routledge

  4 Copy quote

• It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Doe, Modern

  Herbert Read (1971). “The Philosophy of Modern Art: Collected Essays”, Books for Libraries

  7 Copy quote

• It is not my purpose as a poet to condemn war (or to be exact, modern warfare). I only wish to present the universal aspects of a particular event.

  Herbert Read

  War, Wish, Events

  Note appended to "The End of War", poem by Herbert Read, 1933.

  4 Copy quote

• The modern poet has no essential alliance with regular schemes of any sorts.He reserves the right to adapt his rhythm to his mood, to modulate his metre as he progresses. Far from seeking freedom and irresponsibility (implied by the unfortunate term free verse) he seeks a stricter discipline of exact concord of thought and feeling.

  Herbert Read

  Discipline, Feelings, Progress

  "Collected Essays in Literary Criticism". Book by Herbert Read, 1938.

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps it is this theory of all work and no play that has made the Marxist such a very dull boy.

  Herbert Read

  Boys, Play, Dull

  5 Copy quote

• I know of no better name than Anarchism.

  Herbert Read

  Names, Literature, Anarchism

  Herbert Read (1963). “Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism”

  7 Copy quote

• I am not going to claim that modern anarchism has any direct relation to Roman jurisprudence; but I do claim that it has its basis in the laws of nature rather than in the state of nature.

  Herbert Read

  Law, Jurisprudence, Literature

  Herbert Read (1963). “Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism”

  52 Copy quote

• Art in its widest sense is the extension of the personality: a host of artificial limbs.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Personality, Host

  4 Copy quote

• It will be a gay world. There will be lights everywhere except in the minds of men, and the fall of the last civilization will not be heard above the din.

  Herbert Read

  Fall, Gay, Men

  1964 Quoted in Hoggart andJohnston, An Idea of Europe (1987), 'Pyramids and Planes'.

  4 Copy quote

• Love works miracles in stillness.

  Herbert Read

  Miracle, Stillness

  26 Copy quote

• If we persist in our restless desire to know everything about the universe and ourselves, then we must not be afraid of what the artist brings back from his voyage of discovery.

  Herbert Read

  Artist, Discovery, Desire

  Herbert Read (2002). “To Hell with Culture: And Other Essays on Art and Society”, p.142, Psychology Press

  7 Copy quote

• You might think that it would he the natural desire of every man to develop as an independent personality, but this does not seem to be true.

  Herbert Read

  Independent, Men, Thinking

  Sir Herbert Edward Read (1964). “Selected writings: poetry and criticism”

  7 Copy quote

• Art is not and never has been subordinate to moral values. Moral values are social values; aesthetic values are human values. Morality seeks to restrain the feelings; art seeks to define them by externalizing them, by giving them significant form. Morality has only one aim - the ideal good; art has quite another aim - the objective truth... art never changes.

  Herbert Read

  Art, Social Values, Giving

  7 Copy quote

• It is already clear, after twenty years of socialism in Russia, that if you do not provide your society with a new religion, it will gradually revert to the old one.

  Herbert Read

  Eugenics, Russia, Years

  Sir Herbert Edward Read (1971). “Anarchy and Order: Essays in Politics”

  7 Copy quote

• Only a people serving an apprenticeship to nature can be trusted with machines. Only such people will so contrive and control those machines that their products are an enhancement of biological needs, and not a denial of them.

  Herbert Read

  Nature, Science, People

  Herbert Read (1955). “The Grass Roots of Art: Lectures on the Social Aspects of Art in an Industrial Age”

  4 Copy quote

• These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.

  Herbert Read

  Feelings, Favors, Conformity

  "Collected Poems". Book by Herbert Read, 1926.

  4 Copy quote

• Sensibility... is a direct and particular reaction to the separate and individual nature of things. It begins and ends with the sensuous apprehension of colour, texture and formal relations; and if we strive to organize these elements, it is not with the idea of increasing the knowledge of the mind, but rather in order to intensify the pleasure of the senses.

  Herbert Read

  Order, Ideas, Mind

  Herbert Read (1963). “Selected Writings: Poetry and Criticism”

  10 Copy quote

• The slave may be happy, but happiness is not enough.

  Herbert Read

  Happiness, Literature, May

  Sir Herbert Edward Read (1964). “Selected writings: poetry and criticism”

  4 Copy quote

• We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.

  Herbert Read

  Civilization, Literature, May

  6 Copy quote

Page 2 of 4

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin