Herbert Read: Quotes about feelings

Herbert Read was English anarchist, poet, and critic of literature and art. Explore interesting quotes on feeling.

Herbert Read: 84 quotes0 likes

“The words in a poem, (or more exactly, syllables) are vocal signs that convey an intangible essence (the pattern of feeling) that vanishes the moment we approach it with an analytical intelligence.”

What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)

“These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.”

Referring to the curiosity and sense of wonder of the child, p. 17
Collected Poems (1966)

“The rhythm of a poem ceases the moment the feeling loses its intensity.”

What is a Poem - Endword - Selected Poems (1926)

“Sentir mon Cœur is a privilege only granted to the exceptional man — the one who has the ability to find words that exactly (or, to himself, convincingly) express his feelings. … The value of words help to define the feeling itself. … The common failure is to allow habitual words and phrases, flowing spontaneously from the memory, to determine and deform the feelings.”

Source: The Cult of Sincerity (1969), p. 16

“The modern poet has no essential alliance with regular schemes of any sorts. He reserves the right to adapt his rhythm to his mood, to modulate his metre as he progresses. Far from seeking freedom and irresponsibility (implied by the unfortunate term free verse) he seeks a stricter discipline of exact concord of thought and feeling.”

Collected Essays in Literary Criticism (1938)
Literary Quotes

“Once we become conscious of a feeling and attempt to make a corresponding form, we are engaged in an activity which, far from being sincere, is prepared (as any artist if he is sincere will tell you) to moderate feelings to fit the form. The artist’s feeling for form is stronger than a formless feeling.”

Source: Collected Poems (1966), p. 18

“The modern world has largely forgotten, and our educational systems ignore, the primary importance, in the evolution of man, of various types of symbolic communication—the communication embodied in gesture, ritual, dance, music myth, and poetic metaphor. All these modes of expression constitute a language of feeling, a non-discursive form of thought, absolutely essential to our individual development and to the unity of social life.”

Selected Writings—Poetry and Criticism. (1964).
Other Quotes