Quotes from Archibald MacLeish

The task of man is not to discover new worlds, but to discover his own world in terms of human comprehension and beauty.

Keepers of books, keepers of print and paper on the shelves, librarians are keepers also of the records of the human spiritthe records of men's watch upon the world and on themselves.

Poetry which owes no man anything, owes nevertheless one debt - an image of the world in which men can again believe.

Poets... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts.

Piety's hard enough to take among the poor who have to practice it. A rich man's piety stinks. It's insufferable.

The map of America is a map of endlessness, of opening out, of forever and ever. No man's face would make you think of it but his hope might, his courage might.

Children know the grace of god better than most of us. They see the world the way the morning brings it back to them; new and born and fresh and wonderful.

History, like a badly constructed concert hall, has occasional dead spots where the music can't be heard.

A poem should not mean but be.

A Poem should be palpable and mute As a globed fruit.

Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.

Poetry is the art of understanding what it is to be alive.

If God is God He is not good, if God is good He is not God; take the even, take the odd.

We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.

There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

The business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human life - to reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity.

Spring has many American faces. There are cities where it will come and go in a day and counties where it hangs around and never quite gets there. Summer is drawn blinds in Louisiana, long winds in Wyoming, shade of elms and maples in New England.

America was promises…It was Man who had been promised.

There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.

We have no choice but to be guilty. God is unthinkable if we are innocent.

There with vast wings across the canceled skies, There in the sudden blackness the black pall Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

Journalism is concerned with events, poetry with feelings. Journalism is concerned with the look of the world, poetry with the feel of the world.

We were the first that found that famous country:We marched by a king's name: we crossed the sierras:Unknown hardships we suffered: hunger.