Karl Shapiro famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Wise #Unique #Doe
The modern essay has regained a good deal of its literary status in our time, much to the credit of Joseph Epstein.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Credit #Modern #Deals
Every war is its own excuse. That's why they're all surrounded with ideals. That's why they're all crusades.
-- Karl Shapiro

#War #Excuse #Crusades
Self-knowledge is a dangerous thing, tending to make man shallow or insane.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Men #Self #Insane
Poets of course are even more unpredictable than other writers, overwhelmed as they are by the moment they inhabit and finding it difficult to connect yesterday with tomorrow.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Yesterday #Overwhelmed #Tomorrow
The proverbist knows nothing of the two sides of a question. He knows only the roundness of answers.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Two Sides #Answers #Maxims
Lawyers love paper. They eat, sleep and dream paper. They turn paper into gold, and their files are colorful and their language neoclassical and calli-graphically bewigged.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Dream #Sleep #Gold
A man's house is his stage. Others walk on to play their bit parts. Now and again a soliloquy, a birth, an adultery.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Men #Play #House
How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Important #Events #Philosopher
To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Children #Hate #Crime
My soul is now her day, my day her night, So I lie down, and so I rise.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Lying #Night #Soul
The body, what is it, Father, but a sign To love the force that grows us, to give back What in Thy palm is senselessness and mud?
-- Karl Shapiro

#Father #Giving #Body
The good poet sticks to his real loves, to see within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Real #Race #Hands
Already old, the question Who shall die? Becomes unspoken Who is innocent?
-- Karl Shapiro

#Innocence #Innocent
But with exquisite breathing you smile, with satisfaction of love, And I touch you again as you tick in the silence and settle in sleep.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Smile #Sleep #Breathing
Laughter and grief join hands. Always the heart Clumps in the breast with heavy stride; The face grows lined and wrinkled like a chart, The eyes bloodshot with tears and tide. Let the wind blow, for many a man shall die.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Happiness #Laughter #Grief
Leo Connellan has retained his soul and voice in Provincetown and Other Poems.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Voice #Soul
Haul up the flag, you mourners, Not half-mast but all the way; The funeral is done and disbanded; The devil's had the final say.
-- Karl Shapiro

#Funeral #Devil #Finals

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