top of page

"The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Style quotes

"He looked like an evil male model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to Harvard this year."

"However strange your style may seem to others, never mind, because it is your style!"

"Coco Chanel used to talk about wearing more than one string of pearls. Why wear one if you can wear two, or something to that effect. I think that one string of pearls is just fine. But that's because my pearls are black, hers were white."

"It's not my accent, but my brevity makes me stylish."

"Peter, of the three of us, was our prince. He seemed so timeless. He had such elan and style."

"Have the nature of a dervish: then wear a stylish cap."
Explore more quotes by Lascelles Abercrombie


"By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made."


"For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality."


"With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem."


"The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age."


"The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always."


"Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life."


"But the development of human society does not go straight forward; and the epic process will therefore be a recurring process, the series a recurring series - though not in exact repetition."


"It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual."


"The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time."
bottom of page