Delmore Schwartz Quotes

• Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.

  Delmore Schwartz

  New Year, Time, School

  "For Rhoda" l. 40 (1938)

  50 Copy quote

• Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Mean, Baths, Existentialism

  Delmore Schwartz (1950). “Vaudeville for a princess, and other poems”

  50 Copy quote

• What was the freedom to which the adult human being rose in the morning, if each act was held back or inspired by the overpowering ghost of a little child?

  Delmore Schwartz

  Morning, Children, Rose

  Delmore Schwartz, James Atlas (1978). “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories”, p.184, New Directions Publishing

  37 Copy quote

• Love is the most difficult and dangerous form of courage. Courage is the most desperate, admirable and noble kind of love.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Love, Courage, Noble

  Delmore Schwartz (1989). “Last & Lost Poems”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

  18 Copy quote

• Poetry must be as new as foam & old as rock.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Rocks, Foam

  19 Copy quote

• How the false truths of the years of youth have passed!Have passed at full speed like trains which never stoppedThere where I stood and waited, hardly aware,How little I knew, or which of them was the oneTo mount and ride to hope or where true hope arrives.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Years, Littles, Youth

  Delmore Schwartz (1959). “Summer knowledge; new and selected poems, 1938-1958”

  20 Copy quote

• Even paranoids have real enemies.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Real, Luck, Enemy

  Delmore Schwartz (1987). “The Ego Is Always at the Wheel: Bagatelles”, p.10, New Directions Publishing

  20 Copy quote

• Order and disorder, form and formless must have profound psychological roots, nervous roots.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Order, Roots, Profound

  17 Copy quote

• I am a book I neither wrote nor read.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Book

  Delmore Schwartz (1967). “Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge”, p.200, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Love is the tact of every good,
  The only warmth, the only peace.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Peace, Love Is, Very Good

  Delmore Schwartz (1967). “Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge”, p.54, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• How could I think the brief years were enough
  To prove the reality of endless love?

  Delmore Schwartz

  Life, Reality, Thinking

  Delmore Schwartz (1967). “Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge”, p.200, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• And hence the poet must seek to be essentially anonymous,
  He must die a little death each morning,
  He must swallow his toad and study his vomit
  as Baudelaire studied la charogne of Jeanne Duval.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Morning, Poetry, Toads

  Delmore Schwartz (1989). “Last & Lost Poems”, p.53, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• Major writing is to say that which has been seen, so that it need never be said again; so that which has been seen increases, changes in reality, in being.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Writing, Needs, Said

  "Letters of Delmore Schwartz".

  21 Copy quote

• O your life, your lonely lifeWhat have you ever done with it,And done with the great gift of consciousness?What will you ever do before Death's knifeProvides the answer ultimate and appropriate?As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feels the vastDraft of the abyss sucking him down and down,An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown:This is the way the night passes by, thisIs the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Lonely, Fall, Heart

  Delmore Schwartz, “All Night, All Night”

  14 Copy quote

• Where the light is, and each thing clear,Separate from all others, standing in its place,I drink the time and touch whatever's near,And hope for day when the whole world has that face:For what assures her present every year?In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Dark, Light, Years

  Delmore Schwartz (1967). “Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge”, p.27, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• What does long life avail? The best seats at the funerals of friends.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Long, Funeral, Age

  8 Copy quote

• Literature doesn't matter! The only thing that matters is money and getting your teeth fixed!

  Delmore Schwartz

  Matter, Teeth, Literature

  5 Copy quote

• I always cause those who are near to me more suffering than pleasure.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Suffering, Causes, Pleasure

  Delmore Schwartz (1985). “Letters of Delmore Schwartz”, Persea Books

  4 Copy quote

• Each minute bursts in the burning room,The great globe reels in the solar fire,Spinning the trivial and unique away.(How all things flash! How all things flare!)What am I now that I was then?May memory restore again and againThe smallest color of the smallest day:Time is the school in which we learn,Time is the fire in which we burn.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Memories, School, Unique

  "For Rhoda" l. 40 (1938)

  10 Copy quote

• I am of Russian-Jewish distraction.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Distraction

  6 Copy quote

• The Jew is at once alienated and indestructible; he is in exile from his own country and in exile even from himself, yet he survives the annihilating fury of history.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Country, Jew, Fury

  10 Copy quote

• I admired my father very much... at the age of sixteen. But now I see that he was a brutal and cruel man, - but not without remorse, and that was what tortured us, his alternations.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Father, Men, Age

  8 Copy quote

• Literary Party: A traffic jam of the lost waiting for the ferry across the Styx.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Party, Waiting, Jam

  5 Copy quote

• At the moment I'm so exhausted that I feel like cutting my throat, so the next news masy well be that I am across the river and under the trees: what is the meaning and purpose of life? Death.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Cutting, Rivers, Tree

  7 Copy quote

• Whence, if ever, shall come the actualityOf a voice speaking the mind's knowing,The sunlight bright on the green windowshade,And the self articulate, affectionate, and flowing,Ease, warmth, light, the utter showing,When in the white bed all things are made.

  Delmore Schwartz

  Voice, White, Knowing

  Delmore Schwartz (1967). “Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge”, p.52, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

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