Herbert Read

"The words in a poem, are vocal signs that convey an intangible essence that vanishes the moment we approach it with an analytical intelligence."

"All art originates in an act of intuition or vision."

"I believe that the poet is necessarily an anarchist, and that he must oppose all organized conceptions of the State, not only those which we inherit from the past, but equally those which are imposed …"

"Poetry is properly speaking a transcendental quality, a sudden transformation in which words assume a particular influence."

"The aesthetic canons of Puritanism or Iconoclasm have little relevance to the facts of art, in so far as these facts are an expression of the diversity of human creatures. Like Fascism today, those re…"

"English Poetry has come full circle from the widest public appeal, the communal poetry of ballads to the narrowest possible , in the present day as the poet addresses himself."

"The work of art … is an instrument for tilling the human psyche, that it may continue to yield a harvest of vital beauty."

"For the first time the personality is deliberately cultivated as such; and from that time until today it has not been possible to separate the achievements of a civilization from the achievements of t…"