Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts. Laura Riding More Quotes by Laura Riding More Quotes From Laura Riding The terms 'male' and 'female' must be understood as representing no mere primitive opposition of sex to sex; but as defining two worlds of differing quality, in either of which men and women may jointly move and live. Laura Riding mensexmoving She [Venison] had never travelled and so could invent all kinds of strange places without being limited, as travelled people are, by knowledge of certain places only. Laura Riding strange-placeskindpeople rummaging in the storehouses of religious or literary history for myth-matter for ideational uses is of the nature of spiritual vulgarity. Laura Riding usereligiousspiritual Learning can be a bridge between doing and thinking. But then there is a danger that the person who uses learning as a bridge between doing and thinking may get stuck in learning and never get on to thinking. Laura Riding learningbridgesthinking Poetry is a sleep-maker for that which sits up late in us listening for the footfall of the future on to-day's doorstep. Laura Riding poetrylisteningsleep Women from earliest times have been used as conveniences of communication with unseen, inaccessible powers, but always in the sense that such exposing of self to dangerous mysteries, such destruction of the understanding as was required to become the slave of unseen powers, did not matter because the communicant was only a woman, in herself an undetermined cipher - a nothing. Laura Riding communicationunderstandingself We wait, all, for a story of us that shall reach to where we are. We listen for our own speaking; and we hear much that seems our speaking, yet makes us strange to ourselves. Laura Riding strangewaitingstories The sciences that purport to treat of human things -- the new scientific storyings of the social, the political, the racial or ethnic, and the psychic, nature of human beings -- treat not of human things but mere things, things that make up the physical, or circumstantial, content of human life but are not of the stuff of humanity, have not the human essence in them. Laura Riding psychicspoliticalessence A religion addresses the longing in us to have that said from which we can go on to speak of next and next things rightly, in their immediate time - the telling of what came first and before done forever. Laura Riding doneforeverreligion To tell one comprehensive story of how it has happened that what is is, one which shall hold true, come what may, now-after - a story that whatever comes shall perfectly continue or confirm: such is the ideal motive of religions. Laura Riding storiesmayreligion ... whatever is not happening now is unimportant; it is merely curious. Laura Riding unimportanthappeningscurious My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain. Laura Riding functiontelling-the-truthstories If what you write is true, it will not be so because of what you are as a writer but because of what you are as a being. There can be no literary equivalent to truth. Laura Riding being-theretruthwriting Women are strangers in the country of man. Laura Riding strangermencountry we shall know that we have begun to speak true by an increased hunger for true-speaking; we shall have the whole hunger only after we have given ourselves the first taste of it. Laura Riding tastetruthfirsts Women, ever since there have been women, have had a way of being people. Laura Riding womenpeopleway When ... I comprehended that poetry had no provision in it for ultimate practical attainment of the rightness of work that is truth, but led on ever only to a temporizing less- than-truth ... I stopped. Laura Riding attainmentprovisionpracticals Evil I had never found satisfactorily placeable as an integral element of the universal, or total, content of existence. Indeed, evil is evil just because there is no logical place for it, no room in reality for it. It is unreal, and yet real as something unreal. Laura Riding elementsrealevil Emile Saint-Blague had been a lively, versatile painter in his youth, but he had abused his energy by painting too many pictures; so that in what might have been the ripe period of his art he had nothing left but ideas. A man who has nothing left but ideas may be of great service to his friends, but he is of no use at all to himself. Emile was certainly an inspiration to his friends. Laura Riding inspirationmenart What second love could she [Olympias] make out of her ruined first love? The second love that most women make out of their first love for husbands grows from a mutual and tacit sadness in both husband and wife that he is only in rare moments the man both would like him to be. Laura Riding first-lovesadnesshusband
