Famous quotes containing the words bank, west, classic and/or doubles:
“It was like passing a boundary to dive
Into the sun-filled water, brightly leafed
And limbed and lighted out from bank to bank.
That’s how the stars shine during the day.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day.
Now spurs the lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. Fettered words are terrible words. The writer doubles and trebles the power of his writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people. Something emerges from that enforced silence, a mysterious fullness which filters through and becomes steely in the thought. Repression in history leads to conciseness in the historian, and the rocklike hardness of much celebrated prose is due to the tempering of the tyrant.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)