Originality" Is Everyone's Aim, And

When General Eisenhower Defined An Intellectual As "a Man Who Takes More Words Than Is Necessary To Tell More Than He Knows", He Was Speaking Not As A Republican But As An American.

I Think That One Possible Definition Of Our Modern Culture Is That It Is One In Which Nine-tenths Of Our Intellectuals Can't Read Any Poetry.

Anyone Who Has Read Yeats's Wonderful Autobiography Will Remember His Sligo Shabby, Shadowed, Half Country And Half Sea, Full Of Confused Romance, Superstition, Poverty, Eccentricity, Unrecognized Anachronism, Passion And Ignorance And The Little Boy's Misery. Yeats Was Treated Well But Was Bitterly Unhappy; He Prayed That He Would Die, And Used Often To Say To Himself: "when You Are Grown Up, Never Talk As Grown-up People Do Of The Happiness Of Childhood.

Underneath All His Writing There Is The Settled Determination To Use Certain Words, To Take Certain Attitudes, To Produce A Certain Atmosphere; What He Is Seeing Or Thinking Or Feeling Has Hardly Any Influence On The Way He Writes. The Reader Can Reply, Ironically, "that's What It Means To Have A Style"; But Few People Have So Much Of One, Or One So Obdurate That You Can Say Of It, "it Is A Style That No Subject Can Change.

The Safest Way To Avoid The World Is Through Art; And The Safest Way To Be Linked To The World Is Through Art.