My function as a writer is not story-telling but truth-telling: to make things plain. Laura Riding More Quotes by Laura Riding More Quotes From Laura Riding Until the missing story of ourselves is told, nothing besides told can suffice us: we shall go on quietly craving it. Laura Riding missing goes-on stories Nature is what you don't have to trouble about. It looks after itself. Laura Riding trouble looks A child should be allowed to take as long as she needs for knowing everything about herself, which is the same as learning to be herself. Even twenty-five years if necessary, or even forever. And it wouldn't matter if doing things got delayed, because nothing is really important but being oneself. Laura Riding knowing-everything children years How our story has been divided up among the truth-telling professions! Religion, philosophy, history, poetry, compete with each other for our ears; and science competes with all together. And for each we have a different set of ears. But, though we hear much, what we are told is as nothing: none of it gives us ourselves, rather each story-kind steals us to make its reality of us. Laura Riding giving philosophy reality Myth is a tale once believed as truth; believed, it is not myth, but religion. A tale once religiously believed that has come to be called a myth is something of religion corrupted with disbelief. What are beliefs for some societies but myths for others cannot fill spiritual vacancies in the life of those others. Laura Riding vacancy spiritual religion Every woman must live by some sense of victory over disappointments, and Olympias was not the sort of woman to find compensation in her own powers of self-control and endurance. Laura Riding victory disappointment self The problem of good and evil is not the problem of good and evil, but only the problem of evil. In opposition to good there are evil characters, but there are no good characters in opposition to evil. Evil is arguable, but good is not. Therefore the Devil always wins the argument. Laura Riding evil winning character Much of the magical effect that poetry gives of rendering everything it touches pellucid comes from the necessity of compression that it imposes. The impossibility of pausing in poetry as long as may be needed to make sense clear causes many a set of words actually deficient in linguistic workmanship to pass for an eloquent brevity. Laura Riding may giving long Poetry brings all possible experience to the same degree: a degree in the consciousness beyond which the consciousness itself cannot go. Laura Riding degrees consciousness In religion is much tiredness of people, a giving over of their doing to Someone Else. Laura Riding giving people religion The rhythmic pattern of the poem, which forces continuity of attention - incites a pleasurable compulsion to 'follow' - is either a tried metrical suasion-contrivance or a specially invented pattern of physical insistences, equally, if not more, binding in its effect on the reader. From a straight linguistic point of view, there is room for wonder if there is not latent vice in this environment in which pleasurable physically-compelled responses, produced by incidents of poetic utterance, are identified with the Good. Laura Riding vices views attention Truth rings no bells. Laura Riding bells rings truth When modernist poetry, or what not so long ago passed for modernist poetry, can reach the stage where the following piece by Mr. Ezra Pound is seriously offered as a poem, there is some justification for the plain reader and orthodox critic who shrinks from anything that may be labelled 'modernist' either in terms of condemnation or approbation. Better he thinks, that ten authentic poets should be left for posterity to discover than one charlatan should be allowed to steal into the Temple of Fame. Laura Riding long-ago pounds thinking Woman is the symbol to man of the uncleanness of bodily existence, of which he purifies himself by putting her to noble uses. She thus has for him a double, contradictory significance; she is the subject of his bawdry and the subject of his romance. Laura Riding romance noble men Woman has two works to perform: a work of differentiation, of man from herself, and a work of unification, of man with herself. ... We, woman, are now entering upon our second work. Laura Riding entering men two Spiritually, the society we have is the society of men with women present only in adjunctive relation to them, not the society of men and women in reciprocal relation. We do not have the society of human beings. Laura Riding equality relation men People get wisdom from thinking, not from learning. Laura Riding wisdom people thinking I met God. 'What,' he said, 'you already?' 'What,' I said, 'you still? Laura Riding mets god said Polygamy and polyandry distribute the frightening physical solidarity of monogamy. Monogamous couples are always hungry for company: to dilute sex. Laura Riding hungry couple sex I believe that misconceptions about oneself that one does not correct where possible act as a bad magic. Laura Riding magic doe believe
