John Crowe Ransom

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“The image cannot be dispossessed of a primordial freshness, which idea can never claim. An idea is derivative and tamed. The image is in the natural or wild state, and it has to be discovered there, not put there, obeying its own law and none of ours. We think we can lay hold of image and take it captive, but the docile captive is not the real image but only the idea, which is the image with its character beaten out of it.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)

“Equilibrists lie here; stranger, tread light;
Close, but untouching in each other’s sight;
Mouldered the lips and ashy the tall skull.
Let them lie perilous and beautiful.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)

“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome about A.D. 100] hoped that teachers would be sensitive to individual differences of temperament and ability. . . . Beating, he thought, was usually unnecessary. A teacher who had made the effort to understand his pupil’s individual needs and character could probably dispense with it: “I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)

“There was such speed in her little body,
And such lightness in her footfall,
It is no wonder her brown study
Astonishes us all.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)

“And the chieftain’s head, with grinning sockets, and varnished—
Is it hung on the sky with a hideous epitaphy?
No, the woman keeps the trophy.”
—John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974)