Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect. We are advertis'd by our loving friends.
Into what dangers would you lead me, Cassius, That you would have me seek into myself For that which is not in me?
There is a devilish mercy in the judge, if you'll implore it, that will free your life, but fetter you till death.
Now the melancholy God protect thee, and the tailor make thy garments of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is opal.
With caution judge of probability. Things deemed unlikely, e'en impossible, experience oft hath proved to be true.
His forward voice now is to speak well of his friend. His backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to detract.
I'll forbear; And am fallen out with my more headier will To take the indisposed and sickly fit For the sound man.
I'll never Be such a gosling to obey instinct, but stand As is a man were author of himself And knew no other kin.
Better conquest never canst thou make than arm thy constant and thy nobler parts against giddy, loose suggestions.
What, no more ceremony? See, my women! Against the blown rose may they stop their nose That kneel'd unto the buds.
Watch tonight, pray tomorrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold, all the titles of good fellowship come to you!
Manhood is melted into courtesies, valor into compliment, and men are only turned into tongue, and trim ones, too.
This act is an ancient tale new told; And, in the last repeating, troublesome, Being urged at a time unseasonable.
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping.
Though I may deny poets their monopoly on inspiration, I still place them in a select group of Fortune's darlings.
And as we stray further from love, we multiply the words. Had we remained together we could have become a silence.
Through the years I have seen myself as a peaceful person, but the awareness of the anger is part of that process.
There have always been poets who performed. Blake sang his Songs of Innocence and Experience to parties of friends.
It's as if, in the mother's eyes, her smile, her stroking touch, the child first reads the message:'You are there!'
If one were to take the bible seriously one would go mad. But to take the bible seriously, one must be already mad.
Physicians are in general the most amiable companions and the best friends, as well as the most learned men I know.
Though my verse but roam the air And murmur in the trees, You may discern a purpose there, As in music of the bees.
I am on fire within. There comes no murmur of reply. What is it that will take away my sin, And save me lest I die?
I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.
Love laid his sleepless head On a thorny rose bed: And his eyes with tears were red, And pale his lips as the dead.
Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.
My love is of a birth as rare As 'tis, for object, strange and high; It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.
Wisdom with an inheritance is good, but wisdom without an inheritance is better than an inheritance without wisdom.
Sin and shame ever go together; he that would be freed from the last must be sure to shun the company of the first.
this is no dream just my oily life where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable for an entire lifetime.
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
It's so rich as a trope - the whole idea of the road and it being in terms of language, being an active experience.
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
Fame is what you have taken, / Character's what you give; / When to this truth you waken, / Then you begin to live.
If we are true, if we can love, if we have vision, if we can have courage, we can, we should, we ought to, we will.
If we could be pure dancers in spirit we would never be afraid to love, and we would love with strength and wisdom.
Slander is a vice that strikes a double blow; wounding both him that commits, and him against whom it is committed.
A man who strains himself on the stage is bound, if he is any good, to strain all the people sitting in the stalls.
...pleasure, of course, is a slippery word.... Our pleasures ultimately belong to us, not to the pleasure's source.
I'm going through life's cycles at an alarmingly fast pace, but my persona has a Peter Pan quality: he doesn't age.
It's usually important to me to get my idea out first because a lot of times my ideas will seem weird to musicians.
Auden said poetry makes nothing happen. But I wonder if the opposite could be true. It could make something happen.
I consider poetry my vocation, not my "career." My career is as a university professor; that's what pays the bills.
The whole problem of life, then, is this: how to break out of one's own loneliness, how to communicate with others.
If it were possible to have a life absolutely free from every feeling of sin, what a terrifying vacuum it would be.
In this horror of solitude, this need to lose his ego in exterior flesh, which man calls grandly the need for love.
All good and genuine draftsmen draw according to the picture inscribed in their minds, and not according to nature.
So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks your back and bends you to the earth, be endlessly drunk.
Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.
I feel no grief for being called something which I am not; in fact, it's enthralling, somehow, like a good back rub