Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I am asked how I began writing poems, I talk about the indifference of nature.
The remaining liberty of the world was to be destroyed in the place where it stood.
The peach-bud glows, the wild bee hums, and wind-flowers wave in graceful gladness.
Serve many fruitlessly, If one repay, Th' ingratitude of thousands 'twill outweigh.
Poverty ennobles no one; it brutalizes common people and makes them hungry and old.
Nothing is harder on the soul, than the smell of dreams, while they're evaporating.
For the Arabs in Israel there is always a tension between nationality and identity.
People dressed in a certain kind of clothing are never wrong. Also they never fart.
Love is giving, marriage is buying and selling. You can't put love into a contract.
For if the world treats you well, Sir, you come to believe you are deserving of it.
We seek not rest but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways.
If there is no certain reality, the idea of following a leader must be scrutinized.
In a poem the words should be as pleasing to the ear as the meaning is to the mind.
I never 'plan' a stanza. Words cluster like chromosomes, determining the procedure.
Psychology, which explains everything, Explains nothing, And we are still in doubt.
Whoever is not too wise is wise. [Lat., Quisquis plus justo non sapit, ille sapit.]
The central issue of poetry as of politics is the destiny of the human personality.
To ask me is in vain; For who goes up your winding stair Can ne'er come down again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination.
All culture developed as some wild, raw creature strived to live better and longer.
Writing poems is a chance to construct spaces that I want to imaginatively inhabit.
I turn to poems to find spaces that might enlarge, rather than distill, experience.
Not to think of yourself / as someone who did not count -- / Festival of the Souls.
Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?
I'm going home the old way with a light hand on the reins making the long approach.
Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.
A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.
Anyone who is going to be a writer knows enough at fifteen to write several novels.
gardening is a madness, a folly that does not go away with age. Quite the contrary.
I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.
Suddenly it was fall, the season of death, the anniversary of things-going-to-hell.
It's that transformative nature of love and music and yoga that really inspires me.
I don't think we should be presentable or present ourselves for the sake of others.
Our poems will have failed if our readers are not brought by them beyond the poems.
Sometimes I sits and thinks. Other times I sits and drinks, but mostly I just sits.
Whate'er is well conceived is clearly said, And the words to say it flow with ease.
Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.
By faithful study of the nobler arts, our nature's softened, and more gentle grows.
The deeds of men never escape the gods. [Lat., Acta deos nunquam mortalia fallunt.]
She who resists as though she would not win, By her own treason falls an easy prey.
Blemishes are hid by night and every fault forgiven; darkness makes any woman fair.
Majesty and love do not consort well together, nor do they dwell in the same place.
There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman.
Poetry uses language to create a music borne inside human experiences and emotions.
There is a difference if we see something with a pencil in our hand or without one.
Only nature knows how to justly proportion to the fault the punishment it deserves.
Man is of soul and body, formed for deeds Of high resolve; on fancy's boldest wing.
There is no disappointment we endure one-half so great as what we are to ourselves.
America, thou half-brother of the world; with something good and bad of every land.
Most people try to avoid cliches. It's my ambition in life to try to get 'em right!