“Both in verse and in prose [Karl] Shapiro loves, partly out of indignation and partly out of sheer mischievousness, to tell the naked truths or half-truths or quarter-truths that will make anybody’s hair stand on end; he is always crying: “But he hasn’t any clothes on!” about an emperor who is half the time surprisingly well-dressed.”
“Fifty Years of American Poetry”, p. 331
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
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Randall Jarrell215
poet, critic, novelist, essayist 1914–1965Related quotes
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Though harm he does, he serves the good as well.”
Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso
Dunque Amor sempre rio non si ritrova:
Se spesso nuoce, anco talvolta giova.
Canto XXV, stanza 2 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
“An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.”
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Die Fackel
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The Pilgrim, Chapter 33
Song lyrics, The Silver Tongued Devil and I (1971)
“1200. Craft must have Clothes; but Truth loves to go naked.”
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Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author
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Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 606.