History is the ship carrying living memories to the future.

- Stephen Spender

For I had expected always Some brightness to hold in trust, Some final innocence To save from dust

- Stephen Spender

My single pair of eyes Contain the universe they see; Their mirrored multiplicity Is packed into a hollow body Where I reflect the many, in my one.

- Stephen Spender

All that you can imagine you already know.

- Stephen Spender

So i learned both to accept myself and to aim beyond myself

- Stephen Spender

Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted f…

- Stephen Spender

But reading is not idleness?it is the passive, receptive side of civilization without which the active and creative world would be meaningless. It is…

- Stephen Spender

What we call the freedom of the individual is not just the luxury of one intellectual to write what he likes to write but his being a voice which can…

- Stephen Spender

Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

- Stephen Spender