Famous quotes containing the word fails:
“If fancy then
Unequal fails beneath the pleasing task,
Ah, what shall language do?”
—James Thomson (1700–1748)
“I am dead against art’s being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author—detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower’s pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl’s lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“The host, the housekeeper, it is
who fails you. He had forgotten
to make room for you at the hearth
or set a place for you at the table
or leave the doors unlocked for you.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)