T. E. Hulme Quotes

18 Sourced Quotes

In the light of absolute values (religious or ethical) man himself is judged to be limited or imperfect, while he can occasionally accomplish acts which partake of perfection, he, himself can never be perfect.

T. E. Hulme
There is no such thing as an absolute truth to be discovered.

T. E. Hulme
The first time I ever felt the necessity or inevitableness of verse, was in the desire to reproduce the peculiar quality of feeling which is induced by the flat spaces and wide horizons of the virgin prairie of western Canada.

T. E. Hulme
Prose is a museum, where all the old weapons of poetry are kept

T. E. Hulme
Old houses were scaffolding once
and workmen whistling.

T. E. Hulme
All emotions are the ore from which poetry may be sifted.

T. E. Hulme
The unit of significance in the poem is not the word but the phrase or sentence... a poet should consider the effect of the whole poem, not its local felicities.

T. E. Hulme
My objection to metre is that it enables people to write verse with no poetic inspiration.

T. E. Hulme
A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters.

T. E. Hulme
One of the main reasons for the existence of philosophy is not that it enables you to find truth (it can never do that) but that it does provide you a refuge for definitions.

T. E. Hulme
Thought is prior to language and consists in the simultaneous presentation to the mind of two different images.

T. E. Hulme
It is a delicate & difficult art fitting rhythm to an idea... communicating momentary phases in a poet's mind.

T. E. Hulme
Literature, like memory, selects only the vivid patches.

T. E. Hulme
Language is by its very nature a communal thing; that is, it expresses never the exact thing but a compromise - that which is common to you, me, and everybody.

T. E. Hulme
If literature (realistic) did really resemble life, it would be interminable, dreary, commonplace eating and dressing, buttoning, with here and there a patch of vividness. Life is composed of exquisite moments and the rest is shadows of them.

T. E. Hulme
There were certain impressions I wanted to fix. I read verse models but none seemed to suitably express that kind of impression.. until I came to read French vers libre which seemed to eactly fitr the case.

T. E. Hulme
The prose writer drags meaning along with a rope, the poet makes it stand out and hit you.

T. E. Hulme
Poetry is no more, no less than a mosaic of words, so great exactness is required for each one.

T. E. Hulme