“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past.... Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“Those images that yet
Fresh images beget,
That dolphin-torn, that gong-tormented sea.”
—William Butler Yeats (18651939)
“no images of pastoral will,
But fear, thirst, hunger, and huddled chill.”
—James Vincent Cunningham (19111985)