As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.
Thomas Babington Macaulay
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Professionally he declines and falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.
Charles Dickens
More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Falling these, civilization must pass into destruction. It cannot be maintained on the ethics of savagery. For civilization knits men more and more closely together, and constantly tends to subordinate the individual to the whole, and to make more and more important social conditions.
Henry George
Certainly none of the advances made in civilization has been due to counterrevolutionaries and advocates of the status quo.
Bill Mauldin
...modern poetry is necessarily obscure; if the reader can’t get it, let him eat Browning...
Randall Jarrell
Who would be such a fool as to make advances to his reader, advances which might end in rejection or, worse still, in acceptance?
Randall Jarrell
Macaulay, Thomas Babington
MacCready, Paul
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