Feminism? A clear-thinking magazine can have only one attitude; the degree of ours is ardent!
Finally, since The Little Review, which is neither directly nor indirectly connected in any way with any organization, society, company, cult or movement, is the personal enterprise of the editor, it shall enjoy that untrammelled liberty which is the life of Art.
And now that we’ve made our formal bow we may say confidentially that we take a certain joyous pride in confessing our youth, our perfectly inexpressible enthusiasm, and our courage in the face of a serious undertaking; for those qualities mean freshness, reverence, and victory! At least we have got to the age when we realize that all beautiful things make a place for themselves sooner or later in the world. And we hope to be very beautiful!
If you’ve ever read poetry with a feeling that it was your religion, your very life; if you’ve ever come suddenly upon the whiteness of a Venus in a dim, deep room; if you’ve ever felt music replacing your shabby soul with a new one of shining gold; if, in the early morning, you’ve watched a bird with great white wings fly from the edge of the sea straight up into the rose-colored sun—if these things have happened to you and continue to happen till you’re left quite speechless with the wonder of it all, then you’ll understand our hope to bring them nearer to the common experience of the people who read us.
The more I see of academicism, the more I distrust it. If I had approached painting as I have approached book-writing and music, that is to say, by beginning at once to do what I wanted ... I should have been all right.—The Note-Books of Samuel Butler.
Poetry is in Nature just as much as carbon is.—Emerson’s Journals (1856-1863).
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule.—The Note-Books of Samuel Butler.
A Letter from Galsworthy
Written from Taormina, February 23, 1914.
My Dear Madam: