Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night.
Violet! sweet violet! Thine eyes are full of tears; Are they wet Even yet With the thought of other years?
Truly there is a tide in the affairs of men; but there is no gulf-stream setting forever in one direction.
The sentimentalist does not think of what he does so much as of what the world will think of what he does.
Better one bite at forty, of truths bitter rind, than the hot wine that gushed from the vintage of twenty.
It is right precious to behold The first long surf of climbing light Flood all the thirsty east with gold.
The heat of autumn is different from the heat of summer. One ripens apples, the other turns them to cider.
We find ourselves less witty in remembering what we have said than in dreaming of what we would have said.
People seek escape in myth by any means at their disposal, including drugs, alcohol, meditation, and lies.
It ever is the marked propensity of restless and aspiring minds to look into the stretch of dark futurity.
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
Keep us, Lord, so awake in the duties of our calling that we may sleep in thy peace and wake in thy glory.
Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.
Every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies.
'Tis a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.
But his kiss was so sweet, and so closely he pressed, that I languished and pined till I granted the rest.
Gamesters and highwaymen are generally very good to their whores, but they are very devils to their wives.
When you find yourself overpowered, as it were, by melancholy, the best way is to go out and do something.
For me, poetry has no point in existing if it's not to be a prompt or aid to political and ethical change.
I have seen dawn and sunset on moors and windy hills Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of Spain.
Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out.
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds On half the nations, and with fear of change Perplexes monarchs.
God sure esteems the growth and completing of one virtuous person, more that the restraint of ten vicious.
Then wilt thou not be loath To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess A Paradise within thee, happier far.
Back of my forehead I feel tonight A whole sky full of stars. Under a western moon. Life is indeed lovely!
Marjorie Agosin proves the power of the word to transport us to the center of her humane and human vision.
If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or for being slaves.
Whenever fortune wishes to joke, she lifts people from what is humble to the highest extremity of affairs.
Many commit the same crime with a very different result. One bears a cross for his crime; another a crown.
Every fault of the mind becomes more conspicuous and more guilty in proportion to the rank of the offender
The skilful class of flatterers praise the discourse of an ignorant friend and the face of a deformed one.
Poetry is innocent, not wise. It does not learn from experience, because each poetic experience is unique.
In every good poem everything must be both deliberate and instinctive. That is how the poem becomes ideal.
No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow.
I use hate as a weapon to defend myself; had I been strong, I would never have needed that kind of weapon.
There is a space between man's imagination and man's attainment that may only be traversed by his longing.
...unless the exchange be in love and kindly justice, it will but lead some to greed and others to hunger.
Good morning, Revolution: You're the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on
Where the mouth is sweet and the eyes intelligent, there is always the look of beauty, with a right heart.
A preface is a species of literary luxury, where an author, like a lover, is privileged to be egotistical.
It is said that ridicule is the test of truth: it is never applied, but when we wish to deceive ourselves.
Strange—we are always inhabiting more than one realm of existence—but they all fit in if the art is right.
Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.
Pleasant it to behold great encounters of warfare arrayed over the plains, with no part of yours in peril.
How could I be sleeping with this particular man.... Surely only true love could justify my lack of taste.
Vanity is becoming a nuisance, I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I'm not ready for that yet.
You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.
You say, The sensed absence of God and the sensed presence amount to much the same thing, only in reverse.
The first money I ever had was when I received an award from the American Association of University Women.