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Laura Riding Quotes - Page 3

All Quotes Art Giving Reality Religion Truth Writing
'God' is the name given to the most 'important' human idea. In English, as in other languages, the original sense of the word is obscure. But the character of the name is the same in all languages: it is a question.

'God' is the name given to the most 'important' human idea. In English, as in other languages, the original sense of the word is obscure. But the character of the name is the same in all languages: it is a question. 'God' is the question 'Is there something more important than, something besides, man?'

Laura Riding
Character, Men, Names
"The Idea of God". "Essays from 'Epilogue' 1935-1937". Book by Laura Riding, Robert Graves, and Mark Jacobs, 2001.

The anthology meets with two different kinds of reactions in living poets. They will either write toward the anthology or away from it. Anti-anthology poets often overreach themselves, inflicting protective distortions on their work - as parents in old Central Europe often deliberately maimed their sons to save them from compulsory military service.

Laura Riding
Military, Writing, Son
"A Pamphlet Against Anthologies". Book by Laura Riding, 1928.

we shall know that we have begun to speak true by an increased hunger for true-speaking; we shall have the whole hunger only after we have given ourselves the first taste of it.

Laura Riding
Truth, Taste, Firsts

Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep.

Laura Riding
Sleep, Poetry, Listening

Metaphor is, as a common feature of linguistic practice, an incidental expediency, a homely administering of first-aid by mother-wit to jams or halts in expression suddenly confronting speakers, with no respectable linguistic solution immediately in sight.

Laura Riding
Mother, Sight, Expression
"The Matter of Metaphor". "Rational Meaning and Supplementary Essays". Book by Laura Riding and Schuyler B. Jackson, edited by William Harmon, 1997.

A religion addresses the longing in us to have that said from which we can go on to speak of next and next things rightly, in their immediate time - the telling of what came first and before done forever.

Laura Riding
Forever, Religion, Done

The object of all religious activity is to mingle the human and the non-human, and the lower gods represent that which is cast back to the human from the non-human - human gods merely, practice-gods who embody the errors which man makes in first conceiving the non-human.

Laura Riding
Religious, Men, Errors
"The Bull-Fight". "Essays from 'Epilogue' 1935-1937". Book by Laura Riding, Robert Graves, and Mark Jacobs, 2001.

Daisy was a consciously happy young woman without any of the usual endowments that make for conscious happiness, money apart. She was not pretty, she was not clever, she had no friends, no talents, nor even an imagination to make her think she was happy when she was really miserable. As she was never miserable, she had no need of an imagination.

Laura Riding
Clever, Thinking, Imagination
"Progress of Stories". Book by Laura Riding. Chapter "Daisy and Venison", 1935.

Polygamy and polyandry distribute the frightening physical solidarity of monogamy. Monogamous couples are always hungry for company: to dilute sex.

Laura Riding
Sex, Couple, Hungry
"Anarchism Is Not Enough". Book by Laura Riding. Chapter: "The Damned Thing", 1928.

To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth…but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.

Laura Riding
Art, Problem, Poet

Every thought sounds like a footfall, Till a thought like a boot kicks down the wall.

Laura Riding
Wall, Journey, Hiking
Laura (Riding) Jackson, Laura Riding (1938). “Collected Poems”

She [Venison] had never travelled and so could invent all kinds of strange places without being limited, as travelled people are, by knowledge of certain places only.

Laura Riding
Strange Places, People, Kind
"Progress of Stories". Book by Laura Riding. Chapter "Daisy and Venison", 1935.

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