Louise Bogan Quotes

Quotes about:

• The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?

  Louise Bogan

  Journey, Firsts, Mystery

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1981). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

  52 Copy quote

• I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!

  Louise Bogan

  Happiness, Beauty, Encouragement

  Louise Bogan (1973). “What the woman lived: selected letters of Louise Bogan, 1920-1970”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  42 Copy quote

• ... politics are nothing but sand and gravel: it is art and life that feed us until we die. Everything else is ambition, hysteria or hatred.

  Louise Bogan

  Art, Ambition, Hysteria

  Louise Bogan (1973). “What the woman lived: selected letters of Louise Bogan, 1920-1970”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  20 Copy quote

• ...in a time lacking in truth and certainty and filled with anguish and despair, no woman should be shamefaced in attempting to give back to the world, through her work, a portion of its lost heart.

  Louise Bogan

  Heart, Giving, Despair

  Louise Bogan (1970). “A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation”, New York : McGraw-Hill

  15 Copy quote

• Perhaps this very instant is your time.

  Louise Bogan

  Instant

  Louise Bogan (2005). “A poet's prose: selected writings of Louise Bogan : with the uncollected poems”, Swallow Press

  20 Copy quote

• Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.

  Louise Bogan

  Stupid, Evil, Stupidity

  20 Copy quote

• But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.

  Louise Bogan

  Children, Childhood, Hell

  7 Copy quote

• A thousand kindnesses do not make up for a thousand blows.

  Louise Bogan

  Kindness, Blow, Abuse

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1980). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

  11 Copy quote

• But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. ... It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at.

  Louise Bogan

  Silly, Hard Work, Writing

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1981). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

  13 Copy quote

• Poetry is often generations in advance of the thought of its time.

  Louise Bogan

  Poetry, Generations, Poetry Is

  Louise Bogan (1970). “A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation”, New York : McGraw-Hill

  10 Copy quote

• It is through the acceptance of a variety of aethetic and intellectual points of view that a culture is given breadth and density.

  Louise Bogan

  Acceptance, Views, Diversity

  8 Copy quote

• Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.

  Louise Bogan

  Art, Achievement, Feelings

  Louise Bogan (2005). “A poet's prose: selected writings of Louise Bogan : with the uncollected poems”, Swallow Press

  9 Copy quote

• I don't like quintessential certitude.

  Louise Bogan

  Certain, Quintessential, Certitude

  Louise Bogan (1973). “What the woman lived: selected letters of Louise Bogan, 1920-1970”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  4 Copy quote

• The terrible beast, that no one may understand,
  Came to my side, and put down his head in love.

  Louise Bogan

  May, Sides, Beast

  Louise Bogan (1941). “Poems and new poems”

  7 Copy quote

• I'll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound.

  Louise Bogan

  Lying, Light, Long

  Louise Bogan (1941). “Poems and new poems”

  9 Copy quote

• I have lost faith in universal panaceas - work is the one thing in which I really believe.

  Louise Bogan

  Work, Believe, Lost

  Louise Bogan (1973). “What the woman lived: selected letters of Louise Bogan, 1920-1970”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  11 Copy quote

• What we suffer, what we endure, what we muff, what we kill, what we miss, what we are guilty of, is done by us, as individuals, in private.

  Louise Bogan

  Missing, Suffering, Done

  Louise Bogan (1973). “What the woman lived: selected letters of Louise Bogan, 1920-1970”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  7 Copy quote

• Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.

  Louise Bogan

  Agony, Marble, Statues

  13 Copy quote

• The poem is always the last resort. In it the poet makes a world in little, and finds peace, even though, under complete focused emotion, the evocation be far more bitter than reality, or far more lovely.

  Louise Bogan

  Reality, Poetry, Lovely

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1981). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

  11 Copy quote

• ... how much of our inner substance is it good for us to give to public griefs? The whole modern tendency to agonize over the suffering of the entire globe is surely something new.

  Louise Bogan

  Grief, Giving, Suffering

  6 Copy quote

• Women have no wilderness in them They are provident instead Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread.

  Louise Bogan

  Heart, Cells, Hot

  Body of this Death (1923) "Women"

  4 Copy quote

• Intellectuals range through the finest gradations of kind and quality: from those who are merely educated neurotics, usually with strong hidden reactionary tendencies, through mediocrities of all kinds, to men of real brains and sensibility, more or less stiffened into various respectabilities or substitutes for respectability. The number of Ignorant Specialists is large. The number of hysterics and compulsives is also large.

  Louise Bogan

  Strong, Real, Men

  Louise Bogan (2005). “A poet's prose: selected writings of Louise Bogan : with the uncollected poems”, Swallow Press

  10 Copy quote

• It is not possible, for a poet, writing in any language, to protect himself from the tragic elements in human life.... [ellipsis in source] Illness, old age, and death--subjects as ancient as humanity--these are the subjects that the poet must speak of very nearly from the first moment that he begins to speak.

  Louise Bogan

  Life, Writing, Poetry

  7 Copy quote

• At midnight tears Run into your ears.

  Louise Bogan

  Running, Tears, Midnight

  Louise Bogan (1941). “Poems and new poems”

  5 Copy quote

• Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.

  Louise Bogan

  Believe, Ideas, Littles

  Louise Bogan (1970). “A Poet's Alphabet: Reflections on the Literary Art and Vocation”, New York : McGraw-Hill

  6 Copy quote

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