Allen Tate Quotes

Men expect too much, do too little.

Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.

We are afraid that we have not lived. We are not afraid of dying.

Men expect too much, do too little, Put the contraption before the accomplishment, Lack skill of the interior mind To fashion dignity with shapes of air. Luxury, yes but not elegance!

I have felt darkness lead me by the hand Over the hill to greet the singing dawn.

Culture is the study of perfection, and the constant effort to achieve it.

The mission for the day is to encourage students to think beyond traditional career opportunities, prepare for future careers and entrance into the workplace.

Among friends one has the privilege of saying nothing; the civility consists in the assumption that one's silence will be civilly understood. I can imagine a small gathering of friends who say nothing all evening: they recoil from saying anything that the others don't want to hear; and their silence would be the subtlest courtesy.

In a manner of speaking, the poem is its own knower, neither poet nor reader knowing anything that the poem says apart from the words of the poem.

Serious poetry deals with the fundamental conflicts that cannot be logically resolved: we can state the conflicts rationally, but reason does not relieve us of them.

The Spring I seek is in a new face only.

Men cannot live forever But they must die forever.

But we shall not know the world by looking at it; we know it by looking at the hovering fly.

I believe the term modulation denotes in music the uninterrupted shift from one key to another: I do not know the term for change of rhythm without change of measure.

Experience means conflict, our natures being what they are, and conflict means drama.

So face with calm that heritage And earn contempt before the age.

For some reason most critics have a hard time fixing their minds directly under their noses, and before they see the object that is there they use a telescope upon the horizon to see where it came from.

How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry.

At twelve I was determined to shoot only For honor; at twenty not to shoot at all; I know at thirty-three that one must shoot As often as one gets the rare chance - In killing there is more than commentary.

What is the poem, after it is written? That is the question. Not where it came from or why.

Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.

The only real evidence that any critic may bring before his gaze is the finished poem.

The twilight is long fingers and black hair.

Dramatic experience is not logical; it may be subdued to the kind of coherence that we indicate when we speak, in criticism, of form.

So the poet, who wants to be something that he cannot be, and is a failure in plain life, makes up fictitious versions of his predicament that are interesting even to other persons because nobody is a perfect automobile salesman.