Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
He who lives upon the fruit of his own labor, escapes the contempt of haughty benefactors.
He will deal harshly by a stranger who has not been himself often a traveller or stranger.
When a man becomes old, his greed becomes young: sleep grows heavy at the time of morning.
Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.
One thought includes all thought, in the sense that a grain of sand includes the universe.
We want deeper sincerity of motive, a greater courage in speech and earnestness in action.
I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.
Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. ~from the poem "Digging
This creature of the poem may assemble itself into a being with its own centrifugal force.
If you want to keep something concealed from your enemy, don't disclose it to your friend.
Many who had been ahead of their time, had to wait for her in very uncomfortable quarters.
You'd never know that listening to people in the UN but tribalism is the father of racism.
Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits; they do not come to coo.
There are always the simple events of your life that you might try to convert into legend.
Acting from the appropriateness of the heart, we are freed from the neediness of the mind.
Healing is bringing mercy and Awareness into that which we have held in judgment and fear.
Poetry and painting are rooted in the same law, The work of heaven and of the first cause.
I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas.
I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists
If you dissect a bird / to diagram the tongue, / you'll cut the chord / articulating song.
I want to kill myself, to escape from responsiblity, to crawl abjectly back into the womb.
The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life.
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad.
I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars.
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust, or flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?
I hate the anglicanisation of culture, the idea that culture is genteel. It's not genteel.
The people knew what had made them human. It was not their shortcomings, but their hearts.
Change your opinions, keep to your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.
The last resort of kings, the cannonball. The last resort of the people, the paving stone.
Yes, instruction! Light! Light! Everything comes from light, and to everything it returns.
It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, and vice the real murderer.
God has bestowed two gifts on man: hope and ignorance. Ignorance is the better of the two.
Civilization survives on the constant discovery of amity and an equal supply of damnation.
What is called honors and dignities, and even honor and dignity, is generally fool's gold.
Comrade life, let us march faster, March faster through what's left of the five-year plan.
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
In a sense, much that is learned is bound to be bad habits. You're always beginning again.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place, It has to face the man of the time.
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
When a poem doesn't work, the first question to ask yourself is, 'Am I telling the truth?'
Not beauty, no, but virtue rais'd my fires, whose sacred flame did cherish chaste desires.
Soul's Castle fell at one blast of temptation, But many a worm had pierced the foundation.
I believe... that our memories are part of one great memory, the memory of Nature herself.
People are responsible for their opinions, but Providence is responsible for their morals.
Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room.
My surface is myself. Under which to witness, youth is buried. Roots? Everybody has roots.
Your thighs are appletrees whose blossoms touch the sky. Your knees are a southern breeze.
Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unseen, a kiss; Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss.
Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees, Rock'd in the cradle of the western breeze.