Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it.
Colloquial poetry is to the real art as the barber's wax dummy is to sculpture.
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.
Literature is language charged with meaning
There is no reason why the same man should like the same books at eighteen and at forty-eight
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
Either move or be moved.
Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding.
All great art is born of the metropolis.
If the individual, or heretic, gets hold of some essential truth, or sees some error in the system being practiced, he commits so many marginal errors himself that he is worn out before he can establi...
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity.
The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.
If Ford Madox Ford were placed stark naked in a room totally empty he would contrive to turn it into a mess.
Speak against unconscious oppression,Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,Speak against bonds.
A great age of literature is perhaps always a great age of translations.
Winter is icummen in,Lhude sing Goddamm,Raineth drop and staineth slopAnd how the wind doth ramm!Sing: Goddamm.Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,An ague hath my ham.Freezeth river, turneth liverDamn you, s...
Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree.