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"Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry."
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"That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium."

"My love is a winter's mistgently dissolvingthrough the windowat the nape of your neck."

"Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe."

"Whatever you get out of poetry - take it. take it. take it. Words are better off felt than understood."

"I do think that poetry is important though, if you don't strive at it, if you don't fill it full of stars and falseness."

"A poem in the heart is worthmore than a million dollarsin the bank account."

"But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy waysI cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet..Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."

"May this poetrybe the homeyou will someday come back to."

"The American bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors. The great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor. How beautiful is candor! All faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor."
Explore more quotes by Eugenio Montale

"This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul."

"Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready."

"Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought."

"Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries."

"But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty."

"There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry."

"True poetry is similar to certain pictures whose owner is unknown and which only a few initiated people know."

"I have been judged to be a pessimist but what abyss of ignorance and low egoism is not hidden in one who thinks that Man is the god of himself and that his future can only be triumphant?"

"Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness."
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