Delmore Schwartz quotes

Delmore Schwartz was an American poet, short story writer, and literary critic known for his profound influence on mid-20th-century literature. His works often explored themes of identity, existential anxiety, and the complexities of modern life. He became a mentor to younger writers and left a lasting mark on American poetry and prose. Here are 20 of his quotes:

Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.

Delmore Schwartz

Existentialism means that no one else can take a bath for you.

Delmore Schwartz

What was the freedom to which the adult human being rose in the morning, if each act was held back or inspired by the overpowering ghost of a little child?

Delmore Schwartz

How the false truths of the years of youth have passed!Have passed at full speed like trains which never stoppedThere where I stood and waited, hardly aware,How little I knew, or which of them was the oneTo mount and ride to hope or where true hope arrives.

Delmore Schwartz

Where the light is, and each thing clear,Separate from all others, standing in its place,I drink the time and touch whatever's near,And hope for day when the whole world has that face:For what assures her present every year?In dark accidents the mind's sufficient grace.

Delmore Schwartz

The Jew is at once alienated and indestructible; he is in exile from his own country and in exile even from himself, yet he survives the annihilating fury of history.

Delmore Schwartz

Whence, if ever, shall come the actuality Of a voice speaking the mind's knowing, The sunlight bright on the green windowshade, And the self articulate, affectionate, and flowing, Ease, warmth, light, the utter showing, When in the white bed all things are made.

Delmore Schwartz

Order and disorder, form and formless must have profound psychological roots, nervous roots.

Delmore Schwartz

I always cause those who are near to me more suffering than pleasure.

Delmore Schwartz

I am of Russian-Jewish distraction.

Delmore Schwartz

I admired my father very much... at the age of sixteen. But now I see that he was a brutal and cruel man, - but not without remorse, and that was what tortured us, his alternations.

Delmore Schwartz

All literature is an effort at the formal character of the epigram.

Delmore Schwartz

That inescapable animal walks with me, Has followed me since the black womb held, Moves where I move, distorting my gesture, A caricature, a swollen shadow, A stupid clown of the spirit's motive, Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness, The secret life of belly and bone.

Delmore Schwartz

A car coughed, starting. Morning softly Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair From underseas, kindled the looking-glass, Distinguished the dresser and the white wall. The bird called tentatively, whistled, called, Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so, O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning Again and again, while history is unforgiven.

Delmore Schwartz

But this, this which we say before we're sorry, This which we live behind our unseen faces, Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished, For we are incomplete and know no future, And we are howling or dancing out our souls In beating syllables before the curtain: We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.

Delmore Schwartz

Sometimes even paranoids have enemies.

Delmore Schwartz

I am my father's father, You are your children's guilt. In history's pity and terror The child is Aeneas again; Troy is in the nursery, The rocking horse is on fire. Child labor! The child must carry His fathers on his back.

Delmore Schwartz

I no more wrote than read that book which is The self I am, half hidden as it is From one and all who see within a kiss The lounging formless blackness of an abyss. How could I think the brief years were enough To prove the reality of endless love?

Delmore Schwartz