Quotes by "Archibald MacLeish"

We have no choice but to be guilty God is unthinkable if we are innocent.

Ars Poetica A poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit, Dumb As old medallions to the thumb, Silent as the sleeve-worn stone Of casement ledges where the moss has grown— A poem should be wordless As the flight of birds. A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs, Leaving, as the moon releases Twig by twig the night-entangled trees, Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves, Memory by memory the mind— A poem should be motionless in time As the moon climbs. A poem should be equal to: Not true. For all the history of grief An empty doorway and a maple leaf. For love The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea— A poem should not mean But be.

A poem should not mean But be.

And here face down beneath the sun And here upon earth's noonward height To feel the always coming on The always rising of the night

Around, around the sun we go: The moon goes round the earth. We do not die of death: We die of vertigo.

A real writer learns from earlier writers the way a boy learns from an apple orchard -- by stealing what he has a taste for, and can carry off

Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered.

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold - brothers who know now they are truly brothers.

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

A man who lives, not by what he loves but what he hates, is a sick man.