Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I never witness a performance of child-acrobats, or the exhibition of any forced talent, physical or mental, on the part of children, without protesting, at least in my own mind, against the blindness and cruelty of their parents or guardians or whoever has care of them.
Where's the hope that can abate The grief of hearts thus desolate That can Youth's keenest pangs assuage, And mitigate the gloom of Age? Religion bids the tempest cease, And, leads her to a port of peace; And on, the lonely pilot steers Through the lapse of future years.
Lately, I've been thinking about the difference between poetry and prose, and as I've experienced it, poetry is insistent. It allows for images and statements to operate in a single space and resonate powerfully without the application to be elaborated upon and narrated.
Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach.
Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.
I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to the task of closing every couplet with sounds homotonous, expressing at the same time the full sense, and only the full sense of his original.
O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
Brutus, I do observe you now of late: I have not from your eyes that gentleness And show of love as I was wont to have: You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand Over your friend that loves you. Poor Brutus, with himself at war, Forgets the shows of love to other men.
O ye by wandering tempest sown 'Neath every alien star, Forget not whence the breath was blown That wafted you afar! For ye are still her ancient seed On younger soil let fall— Children of Britain's island-breed, To whom the Mother in her need Perchance may one day call.
Books are yours, Within whose silent chambers treasure lies Preserved from age to age; more precious far Than that accumulated store of gold And orient gems, which, for a day of need, The Sultan hides deep in ancestral tombs. These hoards of truth you can unlock at will.
Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay, And could not win thee, Sleep, by any stealth: So do not let me wear to-night away. Without thee what is all the morning's wealth? Come, blessed barrier between day and day, Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health!
The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country.
"We may talk what we please," he cries in his enthusiasm for the oldest of the arts, "of lilies, and lions rampant, and spread eagles, in fields d'or or d'argent; but, if heraldry were guided by reason, a plough in a field arable would be the most noble and ancient arms."
I am the master! I stretch forth my hands, even to the skies! I lay my hands upon the stars, as on the crystal wheels of the harmonica. Now fast, now slow, as my soul wills, I turn the stars. I weave them into rainbows, harmonies. I feel immortality! I create immortality!
The impulse to create begins - often terribly and fearfully - in a tunnel of silence. Every real poem is the breaking of an existing silence, and the first question we might ask any poem is, What kind of voice is breaking silence, and what kind of silence is being broken?
I want to gesture toward a poetry of ourselves and others under the conditions of twenty-first-century absolutism, making us dimensional in a time when the human concrete is continually erased by state and religious violence and by disingenuous jargon serving state power.
We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should no more laugh at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head broke.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Fruits fail and love dies and time ranges;Thou art fed with perpetual breath, and alive after infinite changes,And fresh from the kisses of death,Of langours rekindled and rallied, Of barren delights and unclean,Things monstrous and fruitless, a pallidAnd poisonous queen.
For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.
Right now there’s a man on the street outside my door with outstretched hands full of heartbeats no one can hear. He has cheeks like torn sheet music every tear-broken crescendo falling on deaf ears. At his side there’s a boy with eyes like an anthem no one stands up for.
We pride ourselves at Natrona - I mean, pride {ironically] - on developing a noncompetitive community. That's very important. The values that can come from that kind of meditative work combined with the creative work you do, combined with your activism, can come together.
As I sat at the Cafe I said to myself, They may talk as they please about what they call pelf, They may sneer as they like about eating and drinking, But help it I cannot, I cannot help thinking How pleasant it is to have money, heigh-ho! How pleasant it is to have money!
A breath of our inspiration Is the life of each generation; A wondrous thing of our dreaming Unearthly, impossible seeming — The soldier, the king, and the peasant Are working together in one, Till our dream shall become their present, And their work in the world be done.
Of what's to come the wise perceive things about to happen. Sometimes during moments of intense study their hearing's troubled: the hidden sound of things approaching reaches them, and they listen reverently, while in the street outside the people hear nothing whatsoever.
Some poems take two to three years to finish. Rarely, a poem will arrive whole. It's nice when that happens. However, process has become so grueling for me over the past few years that when one of my students uses the word "inspiration" I practically shriek with laughter.
Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.
The quintessential feminine Self stands at the center of the psyche and it is wild, meaning natural and free, and utterly wise. It is not 'something' we must strive to create. This Self is already fully present, burning strong and waiting for us to come into its presence.
A falcon hovers at the edge of the sky.Two gulls drift slowly up the river.Vulnerable while they ride the wind,they coast and glide with ease.Dew is heavy on the grass below,the spider's web is ready.Heaven's ways include the human:among a thousand sorrows, I stand alone.
Genius is a bend in the creek where bright water has gathered, and which mirrors the trees, the sky and the banks. It just does that because it is there and the scenery is there. Talent is a fine mirror with a silver frame, with the name of the owner engraved on the back.
The idea of how to read a poem is based on the idea that poetry needs you as a reader. That the experience of poetry, the meaning in poetry, is a kind of circuit that takes place between a poet, a poem and a reader, and that meaning doesn't exist or inhere in poems alone.
Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
There are few things more difficult than to appraise the work of a man suddenly dead in his youth; to disentangle promise from achievement; to save him from that sentimentalizing which confuses the tragedy of the interruption with the merit of the work actually performed.
And I have been able to give freedom and life which was acknowledged in the ecstasy of walking hand in hand across the most beautiful bridge of the world, the cables enclosing us and pulling us upward in such a dance as I have never walked and never can walk with another.
Now shall I become a common tale, A ruin'd fragment of a worn-out world; Unchanging record of unceasing change. Eternal landmark to the tide of time. Swift generations, that forget each other, Shall still keep up the memory of my shame Till I am grown an unbelieved fable.
So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wiseRound their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.
What wonders does not wine! It discloses secrets; ratifies and confirms our hopes; thrusts the coward forth to battle; eases the anxious mind of its burden; instructs in arts. Whom has not a cheerful glass made eloquent! Whom not quite free and easy from pinching poverty!
O drink is mighty! secrets it unlocks, Turns hope to fact, sets cowards on to box, Takes burdens from the careworn, finds out parts In stupid folks, and teaches unknown arts. What tongue hangs fire when quickened by the bowl? What wretch so poor but wine expands his soul?
I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry.
Tree It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books-- Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.
[The disarming of citizens] has a double effect, it palsies the hand and brutalizes the mind: a habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral [force]; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.
The brutalities of a fight with bare hands, the crushed nasal bones, maimed lips, and other disfigurements, which call for the utter abolition of boxing in the interests of humanity, at once disappear when the contestants cover their hands with large, soft-leather gloves.
This horror will grow mild, this darkness light; Besides what hope the never-ending flight Of future days may bring, what chance, what change Worth waiting--since our present lot appears For happy though but ill, for ill not worst, If we procure not to ourselves more woe.
It's not that prison makes you shed your abstract notions. On the contrary, it pares them down to their most succinct articulations. Prison is, indeed, a translation of your metaphysics, ethics, sense of history and whatnot into the compact terms of your daily deportment.
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful. And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy, you may find in them a harness and a chain. Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your body and less of your raiment.
Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it...which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be.
I moved into the garage at my mom's house, she wouldn't let me into the house, and the garage didn't have any running water. It did have electricity though, but it didn't have any running water, no bathroom. But, you know, it was great for me because I had my books there.
As a dedicated, successful writer, Lydia Sigourney violated essential elements of the very gender roles she celebrated. In the process, she offered young, aspiring women writers around the country an example of the possibilities of achieving both fame and economic reward.
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.