Laura Riding Quotes

Quotes about:

• Until the missing story of ourselves is told, nothing besides told can suffice us: we shall go on quietly craving it.

  Laura Riding

  Missing, Stories, Goes On

  11 Copy quote

• The problem of good and evil is not the problem of good and evil, but only the problem of evil. In opposition to good there are evil characters, but there are no good characters in opposition to evil. Evil is arguable, but good is not. Therefore the Devil always wins the argument.

  Laura Riding

  Character, Winning, Evil

  8 Copy quote

• People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning.

  Laura Riding

  Wisdom, Thinking, People

  6 Copy quote

• Women, ever since there have been women, have had a way of being people.

  Laura Riding

  Women, People, Way

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• Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go.

  Laura Riding

  Degrees, Consciousness

  7 Copy quote

• How our story has been divided up among the truth-telling professions! Religion, philosophy, history, poetry, compete with each other for our ears; and science competes with all together. And for each we have a different set of ears. But, though we hear much, what we are told is as nothing: none of it gives us ourselves, rather each story-kind steals us to make its reality of us.

  Laura Riding

  Philosophy, Reality, Giving

  8 Copy quote

• I met God. 'What,' he said, 'you already?' 'What,' I said, 'you still?

  Laura Riding

  God, Mets, Said

  Laura (Riding) Jackson, Laura Riding (1938). “Collected Poems”

  7 Copy quote

• Myth is a tale once believed as truth; believed, it is not myth, but religion. A tale once religiously believed that has come to be called a myth is something of religion corrupted with disbelief. What are beliefs for some societies but myths for others cannot fill spiritual vacancies in the life of those others.

  Laura Riding

  Spiritual, Religion, Vacancy

  9 Copy quote

• Nature is what you don't have to trouble about. It looks after itself.

  Laura Riding

  Looks, Trouble

  9 Copy quote

• Truth rings no bells.

  Laura Riding

  Truth, Bells, Rings

  6 Copy quote

• The rhythmic pattern of the poem, which forces continuity of attention - incites a pleasurable compulsion to 'follow' - is either a tried metrical suasion-contrivance or a specially invented pattern of physical insistences, equally, if not more, binding in its effect on the reader. From a straight linguistic point of view, there is room for wonder if there is not latent vice in this environment in which pleasurable physically-compelled responses, produced by incidents of poetic utterance, are identified with the Good.

  Laura Riding

  Views, Vices, Attention

  "The Promise of Words". London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 17, p. 23, September 07, 1995.

  9 Copy quote

• A child should be allowed to take as long as she needs for knowing everything about herself, which is the same as learning to be herself. Even twenty-five years if necessary, or even forever. And it wouldn't matter if doing things got delayed, because nothing is really important but being oneself.

  Laura Riding

  Children, Years, Knowing Everything

  9 Copy quote

• Much of the magical effect that poetry gives of rendering everything it touches pellucid comes from the necessity of compression that it imposes. The impossibility of pausing in poetry as long as may be needed to make sense clear causes many a set of words actually deficient in linguistic workmanship to pass for an eloquent brevity.

  Laura Riding

  Long, Giving, May

  "The Promise of Words". London Review of Books, Vol. 17, No. 17, p. 23, September 07, 1995.

  7 Copy quote

• Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship.

  Laura Riding

  Running, Art, People

  "Anarchism Is Not Enough". Book by Laura Riding. Chapter: "The Myth", 1928.

  7 Copy quote

• 'God' is the name given to the most 'important' human idea. In English, as in other languages, the original sense of the word is obscure. But the character of the name is the same in all languages: it is a question. 'God' is the question 'Is there something more important than, something besides, man?'

  Laura Riding

  Character, Men, Names

  "The Idea of God". "Essays from 'Epilogue' 1935-1937". Book by Laura Riding, Robert Graves, and Mark Jacobs, 2001.

  4 Copy quote

• Appearances do not deceive if there are enough of them.

  Laura Riding

  Appearance, Deceiving, Enough

  4 Copy quote

• If what you write is true, it will not be so because of what you are as a writer but because of what you are as a being. There can be no literary equivalent to truth.

  Laura Riding

  Truth, Writing, Being There

  4 Copy quote

• To tell one comprehensive story of how it has happened that what is is, one which shall hold true, come what may, now-after - a story that whatever comes shall perfectly continue or confirm: such is the ideal motive of religions.

  Laura Riding

  Religion, Stories, May

  4 Copy quote

• My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain.

  Laura Riding

  Stories, Telling The Truth, Function

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• When ... I comprehended that poetry had no provision in it for ultimate practical attainment of the rightness of work that is truth, but led on ever only to a temporizing less- than-truth ... I stopped.

  Laura Riding

  Provision, Attainment, Practicals

  4 Copy quote

• Shakespeare alternated between musical surrenders to social prestige and magnificent fits of poetic remorse.

  Laura Riding

  Musical, Poetic, Fit

  4 Copy quote

• Spiritually, the society we have is the society of men with women present only in adjunctive relation to them, not the society of men and women in reciprocal relation. We do not have the society of human beings.

  Laura Riding

  Equality, Men, Relation

  7 Copy quote

• I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic.

  Laura Riding

  Believe, Magic, Doe

  4 Copy quote

• I would then say that there are two kinds of feeling. The first is to feel in the sense of concentrating your emotions on something immediately available for your understanding: you make your understanding out of the emotions you have about it. The second is to feel in the sense of being affected without trying to understand: something is felt, you do not know what, and it is more important to feel it than to try to understand it, since once you try to understand it you no longer feel it.

  Laura Riding

  Two, Understanding, Feelings

  "The Idea of God". "Essays from 'Epilogue' 1935-1937". Book by Laura Riding, Robert Graves, and Mark Jacobs, 2001.

  4 Copy quote

• Woman has two works to perform: a work of differentiation, of man from herself, and a work of unification, of man with herself. ... We, woman, are now entering upon our second work.

  Laura Riding

  Men, Two, Entering

  6 Copy quote

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