Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Andre GideRead
'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.
Interpretation
The poet should embrace spontaneity and not overthink their creations.
This quote by AndrΓ© Gide suggests that the poet, or any creative individual, should avoid the constraints of rationality that the word 'therefore' implies. Instead of relying on logical transitions and conclusions in their work, poets are encouraged to explore their emotions and ideas without being bound by structured reasoning, allowing their creativity to flow freely.
In practice
In a poetry workshop, to emphasize the importance of free expression, one might say, 'Therefore is a word the poet must not know.'
Life never presents us with anything which may not be looked upon as a fresh starting point, no less than as a termination.
Do not do what someone else could do as well as you. Do not say, do not write what someone else could say, could write as well as you. Care for nothing in yourself but what you feel exists nowhere else. And, out of yourself create, impatiently or patiently, the most irreplaceable of beings.
Old hands soil, it seems, whatever they caress, but they too have their beauty when they are joined in prayer. Young hands were made for caresses and the sheathing of love. It is a pity to make them join too soon.
Through fear of resembling one another, through horror of having to submit, through uncertainty as well, through skepticism and complexity, there is a multitude of individual little beliefs for the triumph of strange little individuals.
It is the special quality of love not to be able to remain stationary, to be obliged to increase under pain of diminishing.
It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.
The Miss America Pageant reinforces a belief that women are merely how they look and how they please.
It is not possible to eat me without insisting that I sing praises of my devourer?
Sleep lingers all our lifetime about our eyes, as night hovers all day in the boughs of the fir-tree.
That was interesting, to find that it wasn't hunger that caused children to become bullies on the street. The bulliness was already in the child, and whatever the stakes were, they would find a way to act as they needed to act. β¦ Intelligence and education, which all these children had, apparently didn't make any important difference in human nature.
If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.
What would it be like if I had something to defend - a home, a country, a family - and I found myself attacked by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience?
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