---
title: "1 Philosophy Writing Quotes By Frank Kermode"
description: "1 Philosophy Writing quotes by Frank Kermode. Plus more from Frank Kermode and more Philosophy Writing sayings from other authors."
image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8b/frank-kermode-16485_change_the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-i_689570.jpg"
---

> [“The discords of our experience--delight in change, fear of change; the death of the individual and the survival of the species, the pains and pleasures of love, the knowledge of light and dark, the extinction and the perpetuity of empires--these…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-in-change-fear-of-change-the/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8b/frank-kermode-16485_change_the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-i_689570.jpg)

## More by Frank Kermode

> [“The first phase of modernism, which so far as the English language goes we associate with Pound and Yeats, Wyndham Lewis and Eliot and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-first-phase-of-modernism-which-so-far-as-the-english-language/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/it-is-already-the-fashion-to-diminish-eliot-by-calling-him-derivative/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“I suppose it would be better if one were aggressive, contentious and so on. But there's rarely any occasion to be savage.”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/i-suppose-it-would-be-better-if-one-were-aggressive-contentious-and/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“When tragedy established itself in England it did so in terms of plots and spectacle that had much more to do with medieval apocalypse…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/when-tragedy-established-itself-in-england-it-did-so-in-terms-of/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“The novel, then, provides a reduction of the world different from that of the treatise. It has to lie. Words, thoughts, patterns of word…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-novel-then-provides-a-reduction-of-the-world-different-from-that/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“The books which seal off the long perspectives, which sever us from our losses, which represent the world of potency as a world of…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-books-which-seal-off-the-long-perspectives-which-sever-us-from/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“the buoyancy of chiliasts”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-buoyancy-of-chiliasts/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [It is one of the great charms of books that they have to end.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/it-is-one-of-the-great-charms-of-books-that-they-have-to-end/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“The discords of our experience--delight in change, fear of change; the death of the individual and the survival of the species, the pains and…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-in-change-fear-of-change-the/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“It might be useful here to say a word about Beckett, as a link between the two stages, and as illustrating the shift towards…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/it-might-be-useful-here-to-say-a-word-about-beckett-as-a-link-between/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“The great majority of interpretations of Apocalypse assume that the End is pretty near. Consequently the historical allegory is always having to be revised;…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-great-majority-of-interpretations-of-apocalypse-assume-that-the/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“You sometimes hear people say, with a certain pride in their clerical resistance to the myth, that the nineteenth century really ended not in…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/you-sometimes-hear-people-say-with-a-certain-pride-in-their-clerical/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“Having compared the novel-reader with an infant and a primitive, one can go further and call him a psychopath; and this I shall shortly…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/having-compared-the-novel-reader-with-an-infant-and-a-primitive-one/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“I hope I have now made it clear why I thought it best, in speaking of the dissonances between fiction and reality in our…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/i-hope-i-have-now-made-it-clear-why-i-thought-it-best-in-speaking-of/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

> [“The formerly absolute distinction between time and eternity in Christian thought--between nunc movens with its beginning and end, and nunc stans, the perfect possession…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-formerly-absolute-distinction-between-time-and-eternity-in/)

[Frank Kermode](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/frank-kermode/)

```json
{
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@graph": [
        {
            "@type": "ItemList",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/frank-kermode/#itemlist",
            "name": "1 Philosophy Writing Quotes By Frank Kermode",
            "numberOfItems": 1,
            "itemListElement": [
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 1,
                    "item": {
                        "@type": "Quotation",
                        "text": "“The discords of our experience--delight in change, fear of change; the death of the individual and the survival of the species, the pains and pleasures of love, the knowledge of light and dark, the extinction and the perpetuity of empires--these were Spenser's subject; and they could not be treated without this third thing, a kind of time between time and eternity. He does not make it easy to extract philosophical notions from his text; but that he is concerned with the time-defeating aevum and uses it as a concord-fiction, I have no doubt. 'The seeds of knowledge,' as Descartes observed, 'are within us like fire in flint; philosophers educe them by reason, but the poets strike them forth by imagination, and they shine the more clearly.' We leave behind the philosophical statements, with their pursuit of logical consequences and distinctions, for a free, self-delighting inventiveness, a new imagining of the problems. Spenser used something like the Augustinian seminal reasons; he was probably not concerned about later arguments against them, finer discriminations. He does not tackle the questions, in the Garden cantos, of concreation, but carelessly--from a philosophical point of view--gives matter chronological priority. The point that creation necessitates mutability he may have found in Augustine, or merely noticed for himself, without wondering how it could be both that and a consequence of the Fall; it was an essential feature of one's experience of the world, and so were all the arguments, precise or not, about it. Now one of the differences between doing philosophy and writing poetry is that in the former activity you defeat your object if you imitate the confusion inherent in an unsystematic view of your subject, whereas in the second you must in some measure imitate what is extreme and scattering bright, or else lose touch with that feeling of bright confusion. Thus the schoolmen struggled, when they discussed God, for a pure idea of simplicity, which became for them a very complex but still rational issue: for example, an angel is less simple than God but simpler than man, because a species is less simple than pure being but simpler than an individual. But when a poet discusses such matters, as in say 'Air and Angels,' he is making some human point, in fact he is making something which is, rather than discusses, an angel--something simple that grows subtle in the hands of commentators. This is why we cannot say the Garden of Adonis is wrong as the Faculty of Paris could say the Averroists were wrong. And Donne's conclusion is more a joke about women than a truth about angels. Spenser, though his understanding of the expression was doubtless inferior to that of St. Thomas, made in the Garden stanzas something 'more simple' than any section of the Summa. It was also more sensuous and more passionate. Milton used the word in his formula as Aquinas used it of angels; poetry is more simple, and accordingly more difficult to talk about, even though there are in poetry ideas which may be labelled 'philosophical.”",
                        "creator": {
                            "@type": "Person",
                            "name": "Frank Kermode"
                        },
                        "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/frank-kermode/the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-in-change-fear-of-change-the/",
                        "image": {
                            "@type": "ImageObject",
                            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8b/frank-kermode-16485_change_the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-i_689570.jpg",
                            "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8b/frank-kermode-16485_change_the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-i_689570.jpg",
                            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8b/frank-kermode-16485_change_the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-i_689570.jpg",
                            "width": 1080,
                            "height": 1080,
                            "caption": "“The discords of our experience--delight in change, fear of change; the death of the individual and the…” — Frank Kermode",
                            "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
                            "creator": {
                                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
                            }
                        }
                    }
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "@type": "CollectionPage",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/frank-kermode/#webpage",
            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/frank-kermode/",
            "name": "Philosophy Writing Quotes by Frank Kermode",
            "isPartOf": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website"
            },
            "mainEntity": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/frank-kermode/#itemlist"
            },
            "primaryImageOfPage": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d8b/frank-kermode-16485_change_the-discords-of-our-experience-delight-i_689570.jpg"
            },
            "description": "1 Philosophy Writing quotes by Frank Kermode. Plus more from Frank Kermode and more Philosophy Writing sayings from other authors.",
            "breadcrumb": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/frank-kermode/#breadcrumb"
            }
        },
        {
            "@type": "BreadcrumbList",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/frank-kermode/#breadcrumb",
            "itemListElement": [
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 1,
                    "name": "Home",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 2,
                    "name": "Quotes",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 3,
                    "name": "Topics",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/categories/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 4,
                    "name": "Philosophy Writing",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/"
                },
                {
                    "@type": "ListItem",
                    "position": 5,
                    "name": "Frank Kermode",
                    "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/about/philosophy-writing/frank-kermode/"
                }
            ]
        },
        {
            "@type": "WebSite",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website",
            "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/",
            "publisher": {
                "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization"
            }
        },
        {
            "@type": "Organization",
            "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization",
            "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes",
            "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/",
            "logo": {
                "@type": "ImageObject",
                "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/themes/sq/assets/icons/icon-512.png",
                "width": 512,
                "height": 512
            }
        }
    ]
}
```