43 Quotes by William Empson

The heart of standing is that you cannot fly.

The way earlier societies seem obviously absurd and cruel gives a kind of horror at the forces that must be at work in our own, but suggests that any society must have dramatically satisfying and dangerous conventions; and people can put up with almost any political conditions, either because they are lazy or because they are ambitious.

Law makes long spokes of the short stakes of men.

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.

My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.

It seems unpleasantly refined to put things off till someone knows.

Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills. It is not the effort nor the failure tires. The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.

The heart of standing is you cannot fly.

You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.