“A new type of poem has been evolved and popularized by the demands of the anthology-reading public. It is called 'the perfect modern lyric.' Like the best-seller novel, it is usually achieved in the dark; but certain critical regulations can be made for it. It must be fairly regular in form and easily memorized, it must be a new combination of absolutely warn-out material, it must have a certain unhealthy vigour or languor, and it must start off engagingly with a simple sentimental statement. Somewhere a daring pseudo-poetical image must be included…”
Laura Riding and Robert Graves from A Pamphlet Against Anthologies (London: Doubleday, 1928)
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Laura Riding Jackson 42
poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer 1901–1991Related quotes
"The Palace of the End" (2003)
Context: There are two rules of war that have not yet been invalidated by the new world order. The first rule is that the belligerent nation must be fairly sure that its actions will make things better; the second rule is that the belligerent nation must be more or less certain that its actions won't make things worse. America could perhaps claim to be satisfying the first rule (while admitting that the improvement may be only local and short term). It cannot begin to satisfy the second.
New Situation and the Policy of the Communist Party of Japan (1950)
Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 51-52
1949 election campaign speech https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1949-robert-menzies, delivered in Melbourne on November 10, 1949
Wilderness Years (1941-1949)
God doesn't believe in atheists (2002)
As quoted in Quote Junkie : Political Edition (2008) by Hagopian Institute
“Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.”
Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics. It would seem that she cannot be a mere anachronism and survival, but must exert a permanent function, whether she be with or without intellectual content, and whether, if she have any, it be true or false.
We must next pass beyond the point of view of merely subjective utility, and make inquiry into the intellectual content itself.
First, is there, under all the discrepancies of the creeds, a common nucleus to which they bear their testimony unanimously?
And second, ought we to consider the testimony true?
I will take up the first question first, and answer it immediately in the affirmative. The warring gods and formulas of the various religions do indeed cancel each other, but there is a certain uniform deliverance in which religions all appear to meet. It consists of two parts: —
1. An uneasiness; and
2. Its solution.
1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us as we naturally stand.
2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.