Conrad Aiken Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• For in this walk, this voyage, it is yourself, the profound history of your 'self,' that now as always you encounter.

  Conrad Aiken

  Journey, Self, Hiking

  Conrad Aiken (1963). “The morning song of Lord Zero: poems old and new”

  4 Copy quote

• I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It's simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.

  Conrad Aiken

  Spiritual, Believe, Discovery

  "Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9". Interview with Robert Hunter Wilbur in September 1963, "The Paris Review", www.theparisreview.org. Winter - Spring 1968.

  4 Copy quote

• It is moonlight. Alone in the silence I ascend my stairs once more, While waves remote in pale blue starlight Crash on a white sand shore. It is moonlight. The garden is silent. I stand in my room alone. Across my wall, from the far-off moon, A rain of fire is thrown. There are houses hanging above the stars, And stars hung under the sea, And a wind from the long blue vault of time Waves my curtains for me. I wait in the dark once more, swung between space and space: Before the mirror I lift my hands And face my remembered face.

  Conrad Aiken

  Stars, Wall, Rain

  Conrad Aiken (1918). “The Charnel Rose. Senlin: Biography and Other Poems”, p.57, Ardent Media

  6 Copy quote

• O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh! When we are dead, my best beloved and I, close well above us, that we may rest forever, sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.

  Conrad Aiken

  Sweet, Sky, Forever

  Conrad Potter Aiken, “Discordants”

  8 Copy quote

• Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,
  The horns of glory blowing above my burial?

  Conrad Aiken

  Death, Lying, Dust

  Conrad Aiken (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.37, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

• Poetry will absorb and transmute, as it always has done, and glorify, all that we can know.

  Conrad Aiken

  Done, Glorify, Knows

  "Conrad Aiken, The Art of Poetry No. 9". Interview with Robert Hunter Wilbur in September 1963, "The Paris Review", www.theparisreview.org. Winter - Spring 1968.

  4 Copy quote

• He whose first emotion, on the view of an excellent work, is to undervalue or depreciate it, will never have one of his own to show.

  Conrad Aiken

  Work, Views, Firsts

  4 Copy quote

• Oh, I've discarded a great many [poems]. And occasionally I've discarded and then resurrected. I would find a crumpled yellow ball of paper in the wastebasket, in the morning, and open it to see what the hell I'd been up to; and occasionally it was something that needed only a very slight change to be brought off, which I'd missed the day before.

  Conrad Aiken

  Morning, Yellow, Paper

  4 Copy quote

• Time in the heart and sequence in the brain--
  
  Such as destroyed Rimbaud and fooled Verlaine.
  And let us then take godhead by the neck--
  And strangle it, and with it, rhetoric.

  Conrad Aiken

  Time, Heart, Brain

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  5 Copy quote

• Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate; all that was once so beautiful is dead.

  Conrad Aiken

  Music, Beautiful, Bread

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  8 Copy quote

• Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam ... and after a while they will fall to dust and rain; or else we will tear them down with impatient hands; and hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.

  Conrad Aiken

  Fall, Rain, Dust

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  7 Copy quote

• It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I!

  Conrad Aiken

  Memories, Writing, Always Trying

  Conrad Aiken (2015). “Blue Voyage: A Novel”, p.143, Open Road Media

  8 Copy quote

• I began by doing book reviews on the typewriter and then went over to short stories on the machine, meanwhile sticking to pencil for poetry.

  Conrad Aiken

  Book, Typewriters, Machines

  4 Copy quote

• One cricket said to another -
  come, let us be ridiculous, and say love!
  love love love love love
  let us be absurd, woman, and say hate!
  hate hate hate hate hate
  and then let us be angelic
  and say nothing.

  Conrad Aiken

  Love, Hate, Ridiculous

  Conrad Aiken (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.151, Oxford University Press

  4 Copy quote

• I really don't know enough about the structure of fiction.

  Conrad Aiken

  Fiction, Enough, Structure

  4 Copy quote

• I'm not in the least Southern; I'm entirely New England.

  Conrad Aiken

  Southern, England, New England

  4 Copy quote

• How shall we praise the magnificence of the dead,
  The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust?

  Conrad Aiken

  Men, Dust, Magnificence

  Conrad Aiken (1961). “Selected Poems”, p.36, Oxford University Press on Demand

  5 Copy quote

• Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.

  Conrad Aiken

  Death, Sea, Meetings

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  4 Copy quote

• The truth--a hideous spectacle!

  Conrad Aiken

  Truth, Hideous

  Conrad Potter Aiken, “Youth Penetrant”

  4 Copy quote

• Youth yearns to youth, full blood loves full blood only.

  Conrad Aiken

  Blood, Youth

  7 Copy quote

• Death is one dream out of another flowing.

  Conrad Aiken

  Death, Dream

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

  4 Copy quote

• All that is beautiful, and all that looks on beauty with eyes filled with fire, like a lover's eyes: all of this is yours; you gave it to me, sunlight! all these stars are yours; you gave them to me, skies!

  Conrad Aiken

  Beautiful, Stars, Eye

  4 Copy quote

• Variations: II Green light, from the moon, Pours over the dark blue trees, Green light from the autumn moon Pours on the grass ... Green light falls on the goblin fountain Where hesitant lovers meet and pass. They laugh in the moonlight, touching hands, They move like leaves on the wind ... I remember an autumn night like this, And not so long ago, When other lovers were blown like leaves, Before the coming of snow.

  Conrad Aiken

  Moving, Fall, Autumn

  4 Copy quote

• The wind shrieks, the wind grieves; It dashes the leaves on walls, it whirls then again; And the enormous sleeper vaguely and stupidly dreams And desires to stir, to resist a ghost of pain.

  Conrad Aiken

  Dream, Pain, Wall

  Conrad Aiken (1920). “The House of Dust: A Symphony”

  4 Copy quote

• Whitman had a profound influence on me. That was during my sophomore year when I came down with a bad attack of Whitmanitis. But he did me a lot of good, and I think the influence is discoverable.

  Conrad Aiken

  Thinking, Years, Profound

  4 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin