Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.
There once was a miller with a daughter as lovely as a grape. He told the king that she could spin gold out of common straw. The king summoned the girl and locked her in a room full of straw and told her to spin it into gold or she would die like a criminal. Poor grape with no one to pick. Luscious and round and sleek. Poor thing. To die and never see Brooklyn. (Rumpelstiltskin)
Up and down! Up and down! From the base of the wave to the billow's crown; And amidst the flashing and feathery foam The Stormy Petrel finds a home,-- A home, if such a place may be, For her who lives on the wide, wide sea, On the craggy ice, in the frozen air, And only seeketh her rocky lair To warm her young and to teach them spring At once o'er the waves on their stormy wing!
Early evening traffic was beginning to clog the avenue with cars. The sun slanted down behind him. Harry glanced at the drivers of the cars. They seemed unhappy. The world was unhappy. People were in the dark. People were terrified and disappointed. People were caught in traps. People were defensive and frantic. They felt as if their lives were being wasted. And they were right.
The deepest work is usually the darkest. A brave woman, a wisening woman, will developing the poorest psychic land, for if she builds only on the best land of her psyche, she will have for a view the least of what she is. So do not be afraid of the worst. It only guarantees increase of soul power through fresh insights and opportunities for re-visioning one's life and self anew.
I lost my mother early, I've sometimes felt I haven't had anyone to show me the way. When I look to the future there's only a blank. "I can't see past the point where I am," the speaker says at one point - "like you, I'm just passing through." If my mother were still alive I imagine I'd have a clearer sense of what a meaningful, vital life might look like 25 years down the line.
All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it's your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.
The two basic maxims of the so-called historical criticism are the postulate of the common and the axiom of the ordinary. Postulate of the common: everything really great, good, and beautiful, is improbable, since it is extraordinary and therefore at least suspect. Axiom of the ordinary: our conditions and environment must have existed everywhere, for they are really so natural.
One summer I was homeless in L.A., when I was about fifteen, and I used to go to the library to get books. I would have books in abandoned cars, in the seats, cubby holes on the L.A. River, just to have books wherever I could keep them, I just loved to have books. And that really helped me. I didn't realize it was going to be my destiny; I didn't know I was going to be a writer.
Abracadabra, thus we learn The more you create, the less you earn. The less you earn, the more you're given, The less you lead, the more you're driven, The more destroyed, the more they feed, The more you pay, the more they need, The more you earn, the less you keep, And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take If the tax-collector hasn't got it before I wake.
Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavy responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them.
Haunted Gulp down your wine, old friends of mine, Roar through the darkness, stamp and sing And lay ghost hands on everything, But leave the noonday's warm sunshine To living lads for mirth and wine. I met you suddenly down the street, Strangers assume your phantom faces, You grin at me from daylight places, Dead, long dead, I'm ashamed to greet Dead men down the morning street.
Indians have no monopoly on environmentalism. That's one of the great myths. But we were subsistence livers. They're two different things. Environmentalism is a conscious choice and subsistence is the absence of choice. We had to use everything to survive. And now that we've been assimilated and colonized and we have luxuries and excesses, we're just as wasteful as other people.
I tried. But I feel that I haven't given utterance to the thousandth part of what lies within me. When I go to the grave I can say as others have said, "I have finished my day's work." But I cannot say, "I have finished my life." My day's work will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley; it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, but opens on the dawn.
While contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: 'Tuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.' No one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred. Yes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday.
With music strong I come, with my cornets and my drums, I play not marches for accepted victors only, I play marches for conquer'd and slain persons. Have you heard that it was good to gain the day? I also say it is good to fall, battles are lost in the same spirit in which they are won. I beat and pound for the dead, I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest for them.
Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again, And, lost each human trace, surrendering up Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix forever with the elements, To be a brother to the insensible rock And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.
Methinks I am a prophet new inspired And thus, expiring, do foretell of him: His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last, For violent fires soon burn out themselves; Small show'rs last long, but sudden storms are short; He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes; With eager feeding doth choke the feeder; Light vanity, insatiate cormorant, Consuming means, soon preys upon itself.
Therefore was I created with a stubborn outside, with an aspect of iron, that when I come to woo ladies, I fright them. But, in faith, Kate, the elder I wax, the better I shall appear. My comfort is that old age, that ill layer-up of beauty, can do no more spoil upon my face. Thou hast me, if thou hast me, at the worst, and thou shalt wear me, if thou wear me, better and better.
Chain me with roaring bears; Or shut me nightly in a charnel-house, O'er-covered quite with dead men's rattling bones, With reeky shanks and yellow chapless skulls; Or bid me go into a new-made grave, And hide me with a dead man in his shroud; Things that, to hear them told, have made me tremble; And I will do it without Fear or Doubt, To live an unstain'd Wife of my sweet Love.
Plays round the head, but comes not to the heart. One self-approving hour whole years outweighs Of stupid starers and of loud huzzas; And more true joy Marcellus exil'd feels Than Cæsar with a senate at his heels. In parts superior what advantage lies? Tell (for you can) what is it to be wise? 'T is but to know how little can be known; To see all others' faults, and feel our own.
There shall be poets! When woman's unmeasured bondage shall be broken, when she shall live for and through herself, man--hitherto detestable--having let her go, she, too, will be poet! Woman will find the unknown! Will her ideational worlds be different from ours? She will come upon strange, unfathomable, repellent, delightful things; we shall take them, we shall comprehend them.
I sit on the couch watching her arrange her long red hair before my bedroom mirror. she pulls her hair up and piles it on top of her head- she lets her eyes look at my eyes- then she drops her hair and lets it fall down in front of her face. we go to bed and I hold her speechlessly from the back my arm around her neck I touch her wrists and hands feel up to her elbows no further.
To feel overflowing love and almost unbearable compassion for all living creatures is the best way to fulfil the wishes of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Even if for the moment you cannot actually help a sentient being in an external way, meditate on love and compassion constantly over the months and years until compassion is knit inseparably into the very fabric of your mind.
Sentient beings, self and others, enemies and dear ones-all are made by thoughts. It is like seeing a rope and mistaking it for a snake. When we think that the rope is a snake, we are scared, but once we see that we are looking at a rope, our fear dissipates. We have been deluded by our thoughts. Likewise, mentally fabricating self and others, we generate attachment and aversion.
Friend, my enemy, I call you out. You, you, you there with a bad thorn in your side. You there, my friend, with a winning air. Who pawned the lie on me when he looked brassly at my shyest secret. With my whole heart under your hammer. That though I loved him for his faults as much as for his good. My friend were an enemy upon stilts with his head in a cunning cloud. -Dylan Thomas
Think for a moment of the great agents and engines of our civilization, and then think what shadowy ideas they all once were. The wheels of the steamship turned as swiftly as they do now, but as silent and unsubstantial as the motions of the inventor's thought; and in the noiseless loom of his meditation were woven the sinews of the printing-press, whose thunder shakes the world.
I hope you all find yourselves sleeping with someone you love, maybe not all of the time, but a lot of the time. The touch of a foot in the night is sincere. I hope you like your work, I hope there’s mystery and poetry in your life — not even poems, but patterns. I hope you can see them. Often these patterns will wake you up, and you will know that you are alive, again and again.
Gaze not on beauty too much, lest it blast thee; nor too long, lest it blind thee; nor too near, lest it burn thee. If thou like it, it deceives thee; if thou love it, it disturbs thee; if thou hunt after it, it destroys thee. If virtue accompany it, it is the heart's paradise; if vice associate it, it is the soul's purgatory. It is the wise man's bonfire, and the fool's furnace.
The naive which is simultaneously beautiful, poetic, and idealistic, must be both intention and instinct. The essence of intention, in this sense, is freedom. Consciousness is far from intention. There is a certain enamoured contemplation of one's own naturalness or silliness which itself is unspeakably silly. Intention does not necessarily require a profound calculation or plan.
How our story has been divided up among the truth-telling professions! Religion, philosophy, history, poetry, compete with each other for our ears; and science competes with all together. And for each we have a different set of ears. But, though we hear much, what we are told is as nothing: none of it gives us ourselves, rather each story-kind steals us to make its reality of us.
One would think that an unsuccessful volume was like a degree in the school of reviewing. One unread work makes the judge bitter enough; but a second failure, and he is quite desperate in his damnation. I do believe one half of the injustice - the severity of 'the ungentle craft' originates in its own want of success: they cannot forgive the popularity which has passed them over.
Vineyards and shining harvests, pastures, arbors, And all this our very utmost toil Can hardly care for, we wear down our strength Whether in oxen or in men, we dull The edges of our ploughshares, and in return Our fields turn mean and stingy, underfed, And so today the farmer shakes his head, More and more often sighing that his work, The labour of his hands, has come to naught.
For an instant she felt them, their identities, almost their substance, pass over her head like a wave. At some time she would be — or no, already she was like that too; she was one of them, her body the same, identical, merged with that other flesh that choked the air in the flowered room with its sweet organic scent; she felt suffocated by this thick sargasso-sea of femininity.
Because you are never here but always there, I forget not you but what you look like You drift down the street in the rain, your face dissolving, changing shape, the colours running together My walls absorb you, breathe you forth again, you resume yourself, I do not recognize you You rest on the bed watching me watching you, we will never know each other any better than we do now
I always forget how important the empty days are, how important it may be sometimes not to expect to produce anything, even a few lines in a journal. A day when one has not pushed oneself to the limit seems a damaged damaging day, a sinful day. Not so! The most valuable thing one can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of a room.
Everywhere we are told that our human resources are all to be used, that our civilization itself means the uses of everything it has - the inventions, the histories, every scrap of fact. But there is one kind of knowledge - infinitely precious, time-resistant more than monuments, here to be passed between the generations in any way it may be: never to be used. And that is poetry.
The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses , each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination.
In Koln, a town of monks and bones, And pavement fang'd with murderous stones, And rags and hags, and hideous wenches, I counted two-and-seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks! Ye nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks, The River Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth whash the river Rhine.
So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever.
The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call.
I find that the old Roman baths of this quarter, were found covered by an old burying ground, belonging to the Abbey; through which, in all probability, the water drains in its passage; so that as we drink the decoction of the living bodies at the Pump-room, we swallow the strainings of rotten bones and carcasses at the private bath - I vow to God, the very idea turns my stomach!
There is part of a structure in which every species is related to every other species. And they're built up on species, like a pyramid. The simpler cell organisms, and then the more complicated ones, all the way up to the mammals and birds and so forth. We call it 'developing upward'... The whole thing depends on every part of it. And we're taking out the stones from the pyramid.
Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze, A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. Whate'er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner: now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will.
Two voices are there: one is of the deep; It learns the storm-cloud's thunderous melody, Now roars, now murmurs with the changing sea, Now bird-like pipes, now closes soft in sleep: And one is of an old half-witted sheep Which bleats articulate monotony, And indicates that two and one are three, That grass is green, lakes damp, and mountains steep And, Wordsworth, both are thine.
They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.
Let me go: take back thy gift: Why should a man desire in any way To vary from the kindly race of men, Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance Where all should pause, as is most meet for all? ...Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears, And make me tremble lest a saying learnt, In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true? ‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’ - Tithonus
I'm speaking to someone I'm trying to get to fall in love with me. I'm trying to speak intimately to one person. That should be clear. I'm not speaking to an audience. I'm not writing for the podium. I'm just writing, trying to write in a fairly quiet tone to one other reader who is by herself, or himself, and I'm trying to interrupt some silence in their life, which is utterance.
Poetry is, above all, a singing art of natural and magical connection because, though it is born out of one's person's solitude, it has the ability to reach out and touch in a humane and warmly illuminating way the solitude, even the loneliness, of others. That is why, to me, poetry is one of the most vital treasures that humanity possesses; it is a bridge between separated souls.