The Super-Substantial Nourishment of Man

Jacques Maritain

“Poetry (like metaphysics) is spiritual nourishment; but of a savor which has been created and which is insufficient. There is but one eternal nourishment. Unhappy are you who think yourselves ambitious, and who whet your appetites for anything less than the [divinity] of Christ. It is a mortal error to expect from poetry the super-substantial nourishment of man.”

- Jacques Maritain, Frontiers of Poetry [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1962], p. 132.)