“For the educated man, there is a moment of his early acquaintanceship with Dante when he realizes that all he has slowly taught himself to enjoy in poetry is everything that Dante has grown out of.”
Ibid.
Essays and reviews, At the Pillars of Hercules (1979)
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Clive James 151
Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator an… 1939–2019Related quotes

Non-Fiction, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)

“He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing.”

“A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating”
As quoted in Shoptalk: learning to write with writers (1990), edited by Donald Morison Murray<!-- Cook Publishers -->
General sources
Context: A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, 'Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write.' There's no difference on paper between the two.

English translation originally from "Subramaniya Bharathi" at Tamilnation.org, also quoted in "Colliding worlds of tradition and revolution" in The Hindu (13 December 2009) http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/colliding-worlds-of-tradition-and-revolution/article662079.ece

Third Thesis
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet