All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.
I wept as I remembered how often you and I had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
Place is extremely important to my work because I am always pulling landscape imagery into my poems.
Now Spring restores the balmy heat, now Zephyr's sweet breezes calm the rage of the equinoctial sky.
We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word.
The cadence of suffering has begun. Every evening at dusk, my heart constricts until night has come.
Why so much innuendo, draped like ivy to hide a cesspool, when everyone knew the cesspool was there?
There can be no progress-real, moral prgress-except in the individual and by the individual himself.
This industry [photography], by invading the territories of art, has become art's most mortal enemy.
True revolution comes from true revulsion; when things get bad enough the kitten will kill the lion.
You don't help people in your poems. I've been trying to help people all my life - that's my trouble
The American imagination has never been able to fully recover from its white-supremacist beginnings.
Is life worth living? Aye, with the best of us, Heights of us, depths of us- Life is the test of us!
Creation differs from subsistence only as the first leap of a fountain differs from its continuance.
What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
Poetry gives us courage and sets us straight with the world. Poems are great companions and friends.
As much as I like teaching and students, it's a kind of rigor, a discipline, that's against my body.
Sound had always been my portal to poetry, but in the beginning, sound was imagined through the eye.
I was a foggy, erratic teenager: a fifth child, the last in the queue for conversation or attention.
My wit is sharper then the finest mustache, and when I walk among men I make truths ring like spurs.
This iron world bungs down the stoutest hearts to lowest state; for misery doth bravest minds abate.
We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.
I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, and present, and forevermore.
Wouldst thou be famed? have those high acts in view, Brave men would act though scandal would ensue.
Beautiful as sweet, And young as beautiful, and soft as young, And gay as soft, and innocent as gay!
It is difficult to believe that a true gentleman will ever become a gamester, a libertine, or a sot.
I think the more stability a person has, the more they can follow esoteric or intellectual pursuits.
And each man stands with his face in the light. Of his own drawn sword, ready to do what a hero can.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint. He was a martyr. Like many martyrs, he held extreme views.
The Image is more than an idea. It is a vortex or cluster of fused ideas and is endowed with energy.
Let's absurdify life, from east to west. Let us play hide-and-seek with our consciousness of living.
Aesthetic matters are fundamental for the harmonious development of both society and the individual.
You have to go the rounds from individual to individual in order to gather the totality of the race.
When we are thirsty, we drink the white waters of the pool, the sweetness of our mournful childhood.
The Divell never assailes a man, except he find him either void of knowledge, or of the fear of God.
Were it not for the bone in the legge, all the world would turne Carpenters (to make them crutches).
What one day gives us, another takes away from us. [What one day gives, another takes away from us.]
An ill agreement is better then a good judgement. [An ill agreement is better than a good judgment.]
All the world is full of inscape and chance left free to act falls into an order as well as purpose.
Home may be near, Home may be far - But it is anywhere love And a few plain household treasures are.
My father went into the armed service and I never saw my mother - I don't know what happened to her.
I was what? - twelve years old - and I was thrown in the cells with these people, so I learned fast.
All special charters of freedom must be abrogated where the universal law of freedom is to flourish.
Lyrical poetry is much the same an every age, as the songs of the nightingales in every spring-time.
If I can do one hundredth part for the Indian that Mrs. Stowe did for the Negro, I will be thankful.
Who shall contend with time,--unvanquished time, the conqueror of conquerors and lord of desolation?
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.