George Edward Woodberry

A marvellous power of expression over language often distinguishes genius; but Shakespeare in his phrases seems independent of the bonds of language as of the bonds of metre.

George Edward Woodberry

A nation’s poets are its true owners; and by the stroke of the pen they convey the title-deeds of its real possessions to strangers and aliens.

George Edward Woodberry

A writer is justly called ‘universal’ when he is understood within the limits of his civilization, though that be bounded by a country or an age.

George Edward Woodberry

Aesthetic freedom is like free speech; it is, indeed, a form of free speech.

George Edward Woodberry

Agitation is that part of our intellectual life where vitality results; there ideas are born, breed and bring forth.

George Edward Woodberry

Always begin anew with the day, just as nature does. It is one of the sensible things that nature does.

George Edward Woodberry

Art does not, like science, set forth a permanent order of nature, the enduring skeleton of law. Two factors primarily determine its works: one is the idea in the mind of the artist, the other is his power of expression; and both these factors are extremely variable.

George Edward Woodberry

Genius is that in which the soul of a race bums at its brightest, revealing and preserving its vision; works of art are great and significant in proportion to the clarity and fulness with which they incarnate this vision.

George Edward Woodberry

I seldom deal in symbolisms; if there be hidden meanings in my verse, they are there without my knowledge.

George Edward Woodberry

It does not appear to me to be open to question that there is in the soul of man a nature and an order obtaining in it as permanent and universal as in the material world.

George Edward Woodberry