Kenneth Rexroth Quotes

Quotes about:

• Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense: the creative act.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Creative, Defense, World

  Kenneth Rexroth (1970). “The alternative society: essays from the other world”

  58 Copy quote

• The mature man lives quietly, does good privately, takes responsibility for his actions, treats others with friendliness and courtesy, finds mischief boring and avoids it. Without the hidden conspiracy of goodwill, society would not endure an hour.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Responsibility, Men, Doe

  13 Copy quote

• Maturity is having the ability to escape categorization.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Maturity, Categorization, Ability

  17 Copy quote

• I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Book, Son, Poetry

  33 Copy quote

• The meaning of life can be revealed but never explained.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Meaning Of Life

  Kenneth Rexroth (1968). “Classics Revisited”, p.3, New Directions Publishing

  16 Copy quote

• I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. I wish to speak to and for those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and the Domestication of Conspicuous Consumption.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lying, Writing, Heart

  Preface to the second edition of "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" by Kenneth Rexroth, 1953.

  19 Copy quote

• Now I know surely and forever,
  However much I have blotted our
  Waking love, its memory is still
  there. And I know the web, the net,
  The blind and crippled bird. For then, for
  One brief instant it was not blind, nor
  Trapped, not crippled. For one heart beat the
  Heart was free and moved itself. O love,
  I who am lost and damned with words,
  Whose words are a business and an art,
  I have no words. These words, this poem, this
  Is all confusion and ignorance.
  But I know that coached by your sweet heart,
  My heart beat one free beat and sent
  Through all my flesh the blood of truth.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Life, Sweet, Art

  "She Is Away". Poem by Kenneth Rexroth. "In Defense of the Earth". Book by Kenneth Rexroth, www-personal.umich.edu. 1956.

  13 Copy quote

• We have forgotten love, and Sat lonely beside each other. We have eaten together, Lonely behind our plates, we Have hidden behind children, We have slept together in A lonely bed. Now my heart Turns toward you, awake at last, Penitent, lost in the last Loneliness. Speak to me. Talk To me. Break the black silence.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lonely, Children, Loneliness

  11 Copy quote

• There have always been those who, though they see tragedy as the outcome of freedom, will nevertheless judge that tragedy is not too high a price to pay.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Judging, Tragedy, Outcomes

  Kenneth Rexroth (1968). “Classics Revisited”, p.45, New Directions Publishing

  16 Copy quote

• Perhaps this is what really happens in life to most good men. They are not crucified. They simply pass through life and then die, and their passing influences just a few people to make them just a little happy.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Men, People, Good Man

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.102, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• Man thrives where angels would die of ecstasy and where pigs would die of disgust.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Angel, Men, Pigs

  9 Copy quote

• It takes great labor to uncover the convincing simple speech of the heart. Poetic candor comes with hard labor, so even does impetuosity and impudence.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Heart, Simple, Doe

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.28, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• The free, creative, loving people who shine so brightly in my memory of studios and coffee shops have become models for a huge section of the population. If they in turn can just stay alive in the face of power and terror, they may become the decisive section.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Life, Memories, Coffee

  Kenneth Rexroth (1969). “An autobiographical novel”

  9 Copy quote

• Ex-cons always say, "You never know what makes the wheels go round until you've done time in the joint." This is even more true of psychiatric hospitals. It is a perfect mass hypostatization of society, the organization of the Social Lie.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lying, Organization, Perfect

  "An Autobiographical Novel". Book by Kenneth Rexroth. Chapter: "Pysch Ward", www.bopsecrets.org. 1991.

  13 Copy quote

• The holiness of the real
  Is always there, accessible
  In total immanence. The nodes
  Of transcendence coagulate
  In you, the experiencer,
  And in the other, the lover.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Life, Real, Holiness

  Kenneth Rexroth (1967). “The Collected Shorter Poems”, p.248, New Directions Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• Today we hear a great deal about Organizational Men, Mass Culture, Conformity, the Lonely Crowd, the Power Elite and its Conspiracy of Mediocrity. We forget that the very volume of this criticism is an indication that our society is still radically pluralistic. Not only are there plenty of exceptionalists who take exception to the stereotyping of the mass culture but that very string of epithets comes from a series of books that have been recent best-sellers, symptoms of a popular, living tradition of dissent from things as they are.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Lonely, Book, Men

  "An Autobiographical Novel". Book by Kenneth Rexroth. Introduction, www.bopsecrets.org. 1991.

  7 Copy quote

• Marriage is the last sacrament available to modern man, and with the terrible destruction of interpersonal relations by capitalism and its war-making State, it is not very available, nor is it surely enduring. But then, vision does not come with guarantees.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  War, Men, Vision

  "An Autobiographical Novel". Book by Kenneth Rexroth. Chapter: "World War II", www.bopsecrets.org. 1991.

  8 Copy quote

• Crooked cards and straight whiskey, Slow horses and fast women.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Horse, Cards, Whiskey

  Kenneth Rexroth (1967). “The Collected Shorter Poems”, p.321, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• You learn nothing if you carry with you a journalistic system of values, which is invented to save reporters from experience.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Reporters, Journalistic, Ifs

  Kenneth Rexroth (1969). “An autobiographical novel”

  9 Copy quote

• Poetry has ceased to be a public art and has become, as Whitehead said of religion, "What man does with his aloneness.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Art, Men, Doe

  Kenneth Rexroth (1968). “Classics Revisited”, p.91, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• Any talented decadent can make unreality believable. To make reality convincing is another matter, a matter for only the greatest masters.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Reality, Matter, Masters

  "Classics Revisited". Chapter: "Tolstoy: War and Peace", p. 192, 1968.

  4 Copy quote

• A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. Thunder growls far off. Our campfire is a single light. Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. The manifold voices of falling water Take all night. Wrapped in your down bag Starlight on you cheeks and eyelids Your breath comes and goes In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. Ten thousand years revolve without change. All this will never be again.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Time, Fall, Moon

  Kenneth Rexroth (1967). “The Collected Shorter Poems”, p.21, New Directions Publishing

  25 Copy quote

• The dumping of the mentally ill, full of these new psychiatric drugs, into the streets is a scandal. It's been carried furthest in New York, where whole sections of the decayed Upper West Side are being filled with pensioners and psychotic patients on stelazine, lithium carbonate, and everything else under the sun. They can't diagnose the patient, so they give him the whole psychiatric pharmacopoeia at once, and he walks around in a psychotic trance beautifully painted all over with petrochemicals.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  New York, Giving, Drug

  "An Autobiographical Novel". Book by Kenneth Rexroth. Chapter: "Pysch Ward", www.bopsecrets.org. 1991.

  5 Copy quote

• Lost in loneliness and pain. Black and unendurable, Thinking of you with every Corpuscle of my flesh, in Every instant of night And day.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Thinking Of You, Pain, Loneliness

  Kenneth Rexroth (1967). “The Collected Shorter Poems”, p.230, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• Victorian society was homogeneous without being homogenized. It was, to paraphrase the epigram about Parliament, a society of extreme eccentrics who agreed so well that they could afford to differ.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Parliament, Wells, Paraphrase

  Kenneth Rexroth, Bradford Morrow (1989). “More Classics Revisited”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

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