National Book Award Acceptance Speech (1957)
Context: It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; that constitute his ideal audience and his better self. To this congress the poet speaks not of peculiar and personal things, but of what in himself is most common, most anonymous, most fundamental, most true of all men. And he speaks not in private grunts and mutterings but in the public language of the dictionary, of literary tradition, and of the street. Writing poetry is talking to oneself; yet it is a mode of talking to oneself in which the self disappears; and the products something that, though it may not be for everybody, is about everybody.
“Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.”
Source: Prime of Life
“…to feel oneself a martyr, as everybody knows, is a pleasurable thing…”
Source: Literary Years and War (1900-1918), The Riddle Of The Sands (1903), p. 1.
“Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”
Notes on sourcing http://www.bartleby.com/73/1982.html
Twain did say:
: "There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there … In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. ...
Yes, one of the brightest gems in the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it."
:* Speech at the dinner of New England Society in New York City (22 December 1876)
Misattributed
“Everybody talks, but there is no conversation.”
“Stories,” p. 60
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”
[2006, Light on the Ancient Worlds, World Wisdom, 102, 978-0-941532-72-3]
Spiritual path, Prayer
About Rome.
Letter Five (29 October 1903)
Letters to a Young Poet (1934)
