“It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.”
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Variant: A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.
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Robert Frost 265
American poet 1874–1963Related quotes
The portion of "The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom." is often misquoted as: Poetry begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same as for love. No one can really hold that the ecstasy should be static and stand still in one place. It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. It has denouement. It has an outcome that though unforeseen was predestined from the first image of the original mood-and indeed from the very mood. It is but a trick poem and no poem at all if the best of it was thought of first and saved for the last. It finds its own name as it goes and discovers the best waiting for it in some final phrase at once wise and sad-the happy-sad blend of the drinking song.
“Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.”
“Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.”
Of Prudence (1668), line 83.
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 4 "Called To The Bar"
“Philosophy … bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.”
“Logological Fragments,” Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12
“The art of representing the human figure in the ancient world begins and ends with ‘frontality’.”
The Social History of Art, Volume I. From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages, 1999, Chapter III. Greece and Rome
“The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.”
"Fifth Talk in The Oak Grove, 11 June 1944" http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=173&chid=4529&w=%22To+understand+oneself+requires+patience%22&s=Text, J. Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 440611, Vol. III, p. 219
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.