Louise Bogan (August 11, 1897 – February 4, 1970) was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945. As poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine for nearly 40 years, Bogan played a major role in shaping mainstream poetic sensibilities of the mid-20th Century. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A thousand kindnesses do not make up for a thousand blows.
Because language is the carrier of ideas, it is easy to believe that it should be very little else than such a carrier.
But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.
How much of our inner substance is it good for us to give to public griefs? The whole modern tendency to agonize over the suffering of the entire globe is surely something new.
I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
I have lost faith in universal panaceas- work is the one thing in which I really believe.
I think that 'intellectuals' cause a great deal of trouble trying to do it all with the mind. It is the heart that counts.
Innocence of heart and violence of feeling are necessary in any kind of superior achievement: The arts cannot exist without them.
Perhaps this very instant is your time.
Politics are nothing but sand and gravel: it is art and life that feed us until we die. Everything else is ambition, hysteria or hatred
Stupidity always accompanies evil. Or evil, stupidity.
The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?
The intellectual is a middle-class product; if he is not born into the class he must soon insert himself into it, in order to exist. He is the fine nervous flower of the bourgeoisie.
You need some place to work in. That's the door half open.
Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.
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(August 11 is also the birthday of Angus Wilson and Alex Haley.)
Categories: Louise Bogan, Quotes of the day
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