“Our poetry, on the contrary, has a language peculiar to itself, to which almost every one that has written has added something.”

Presenting poetic language as a tradition continually enriched by individual writers · Letter to Richard West, 8 April 1742

• Language
• Poetry
• Tradition

“Linguistically, Naturalism achieved nothing beyond loosening the material and sweeping away rigid conventions.”

Original: Der Naturalismus hat sprachlich nichts bewirkt als eine Auflockerung des Materials und eine Beseitigung erstarrter Conventionen. — A characteristically forceful judgement on Naturalism's contribution to literary language · University lecture, Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik der neuesten Zeit, 1914 (German)

• Criticism
• Language
• Literature

“The language wears away within us.”

Original: Le langage s'use en nous. — Language can lose its freshness and expressive force through habitual use. · Tel quel (French)

• Communication
• Language
• Words

“I have now become familiar enough with the language to make out a conversation without much difficulty.”

Recording the satisfaction of gaining practical fluency through immersion · Letter from Europe

• Language
• Learning
• Travel

“In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry.”

Connecting the origins of language, society and poetry through the creative power of expression. · Essay, A Defence of Poetry

• Language
• Poetry
• Society

“I have made an endeavour to-day to read the Philoktetes; compassing about 50 lines; it's a distinct grind but I think necessary, if one is not altogether to lose the habit of Greek.”

A candid glimpse of the discipline Dowson thought necessary to maintain his classical learning · Letter to Arthur Moore, 1890

• Discipline
• Language
• Learning

“Poetry is the expression, through human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning in the aspects of existence; it gives authenticity to our sojourn and constitutes the sole spiritual task.”

Original: La Poésie est l’expression, par le langage humain ramené à son rythme essentiel, du sens mystérieux des aspects de l’existence: elle doue ainsi d’authenticité notre séjour et constitue la seule tâche spirituelle. — Defines poetry as a rhythmic use of language that reveals the mystery within existence. · Letter to Léo d’Orfer, 27 June 1884 (French)

• Language
• Mystery
• Poetry

“Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.”

Explaining how literary examples preserve and expand linguistic meaning · Preface to A Dictionary of the English Language

• Art
• Language

“Barristers in general carry a change of tongue about them, although some of them do not put on a clean one so often as we could wish.”

A barbed jest at the verbal shifts of the legal profession · Letter to James Jerwood

• Language
• Society
• Wit

“Anglo-Saxon has not been cultivated into a better form, but has been corrupted for the worse, since King Alfred's days.”

Arguing that the development of standard English had involved a loss rather than an improvement in the language · Se Gefylsta

• Change
• History
• Language

“The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.”

Emphasising the importance of hearing rhythm, intonation and living speech in both writing and reading · Letter to John T. Bartlett, 22 February 1914

• Language
• Reading
• Writing

“A single word can open a world or shatter it completely.”

Original: Ein einziges Wort kann eine Welt eröffnen oder sie völlig zerschmettern. — Highlights the immense destructive and creative power of speech · Conversational remark recorded by Karl Röck, 1913 (German)

• Language
• Power
• Words

“If you call a spade a diamond some people will think you are frivolous and affected, but other people will understand how much blacker things may be said about spades by the simple trick of pretending that they are diamonds.”

She treats symbol and artifice as a way to speak more darkly, not less honestly · Essay, Symbols in Literature, Collected Prose

• Language
• Symbolism
• Truth

“To hear these children speak Irish the way they do makes one feel that the language of Niall Naoi Giallach is not dead yet, and has, indeed, no signs of dying.”

Finding hope for cultural continuity in the living speech of children · Mearing Stones, Teelin, Bunglass, and Slieve League

• Childhood
• Hope
• Language

“They bewitch the memory, having once caught it, and insist on saying themselves over and over.”

Capturing the way memorable poetry continues to sound inwardly long after reading · Essay, Robert Herrick, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Language
• Memory
• Poetry

“He has shown how the immortal life of all beautiful things can be handed down for all time in dialect.”

His acknowledgement of the lasting artistic value that dialect can carry, despite his reservations about Negro dialect. · Essay, The Negro as a Writer

• Beauty
• Language
• Literature

“If dialect is missed in this collection, it is enough to state that the day of dialect as far as Negro poets are concerned is in the decline.”

Treats literary dialect as a fading, often artificial medium rather than a required racial stamp · Foreword, Caroling Dusk, 1927

• Convention
• Language
• Poetry

“In my dialect wanderings through Yorkshire I discovered that while there was a hunger for poetry in the hearts of the people, the great masterpieces of our national song made little or no appeal to them.”

Standard English verse can leave the hungry unfed · Preface, Songs of the Ridings

• Language
• Poetry
• Readers

“Language expands when the imagination refuses to be bounded by convention.”

Original: تتسع اللغة عندما يرفض الخيال أن تحده التقاليد — A defense of poetic innovation and freedom · Literary reflection (Arabic)

• Convention
• Imagination
• Language

“In the creation of this poetry of the people, by the people, dialect may well be called upon to play a part. Dialect is of the people.”

Local speech as a fitting instrument for popular verse · Preface, Songs of the Ridings

• Democracy
• Language
• Poetry

“He speaks our language better than we do merely because he is more skilful with it than we are; his skill is part of our skill, his power of our power.”

Treats poetic gift as a heightening of shared speech · Introduction, Ardours and Endurances, 1917

• Language
• Poetry
• Skill

“It is to the very limitation of this power of language, as it seems to me, that Poetry owes her magic.”

Finding poetic power in what language leaves partly unsaid · Lecture, On the Nature of Poetry, 1825–26

• Language
• Mystery
• Poetry

“Believing in the human word, spoken or written, is as indispensable to humans as trusting the firmness of the ground.”

Original: Croire à la parole humaine, parlée ou écrite, est aussi indispensable aux humains que de se fier à la fermeté du sol. — Human communication depends upon a basic trust that makes collective life possible. · Cahiers (French)

• Communication
• Language
• Trust

“Poetry is the attempt of human speech to catch the movement of the eternal.”

Defining the transcendent goal of poetic language beyond everyday prose · Ideas and People (essay / memoir, 1936)

• Eternity
• Language
• Poetry