Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Poetry which owes no man anything, owes nevertheless one debt - an image of the world in which men can again believe.
Our doom is, to be sifted by the wind, heaped up, smoothed down like silly sands. We are less permanent than thought.
He teaches best, Who feels the hearts of all men in his breast, And knows their strength or weakness through his own.
The law is simple. Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully the first time.
I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.
I'm pretty much all for poetry in public places - poetry on buses, poetry on subways, on billboards, on cereal boxes.
I'm not a claustrophobe, but you don't need to be to feel claustrophobic inside an MRI. It's like being buried alive.
Easy is to occupy a place in a telephone book. Difficult is to occupy someone's heart; know that you're really loved.
I write quite a lot of sonnets, and I think of them almost as prayers: short and memorable, something you can recite.
I have no precise idea of who makes up my readership. I'm surprised when I discover people have read my poems at all.
as a child i suppose i was not quite normal. my happiest times were when i was left alone in the house on a saturday.
the grace is being able to like rock music, symphony music, jazz … anything that contains the original energy of joy.
I do not like to work and have no trade but i do like to eat, so this is basic, the basic training of slaves to fear.
They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.
When I write, when I'm going hot, I don't want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you're pushing it.
There are no hierarchies, no infinite, no such many as mass, there are only/ eyes in all heads,/ to be looked out of.
what can we do when even the public conveyances sing? how can we go anywhere, even cross-town how get out of anywhere
Faith, mighty faith, the promise sees, And looks to God alone; Laughs at impossibilities, And cries it shall be done.
One family--we dwell in Him, One church above, beneath, Though now divided by the stream, The narrow stream of death.
It's hard to choose the right word, the right line. This Body Mystery is a small book, but it took me over ten years.
Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love Divine; Love was born at Christmas; Star and angels gave the sign.
Upon my lips the breath of song, Within my heart a rhyme, Howe'er time trips or lags along, I keep abreast with time!
At grief so deep the tongue must wag in vain; the language of our sense and memory lacks the vocabulary of such pain.
Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.
An old-timer is someone who can remember when a naughty child was taken to the woodshed instead of to a psychiatrist.
I owe my own fluency with language to Brooklyn. Everyone talked about everything, from the Dodgers to the revolution.
Here is a semi-transparent pebble I picked up on the way to my EKG. Probably worthless but it is my heart so take it.
Creating a poem is a continual process of re-creating your ignorance, in the sense of not knowing what's coming next.
Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty.
By the time I was eleven years old, I had been taught that nature, far from abhorring a Vacuum, positively adores it.
Mastery in poetry consists largely in the instinct for not ruining or smothering or tinkering with moments of vision.
Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine art; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest in which to reach true excellence.
With my somewhat vague aspiring mind, to be imprisoned in the rude details of a most material life was often irksome.
And when I'm writing well and when I'm inside the feeling, then I can do fairly complicated things with some fluency.
Writing poetry is such an intense experience that it helps to start the process in a casual or wayward frame of mind.
Under the shadow of earthly disappointment, all unconscious to ourselves, our Divine Redeemer is walking by our side.
I mean to retire, where nobody will have heard about my special skills. And conversation is mainly about the weather.
The purpose of photography is to create an emotion about the world through what has been carefully seen and selected.
How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.
The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep (Cantico del Sole)
Personal dignity is to be measured with the yardstick of one's conscience, not with that of other people's judgement.
Silence is no certain token that no secret grief is there; Sorrow which is never spoken is the heaviest load to bear.
Hath any wounded thee with injuries? Meet them with patience. Hasty words rankle the wound; soft language dresses it.
False world, thou ly'st: thou canst not lend The least delight: Thy favours cannot gain a friend, They are so slight.
Individual character is in the right that is in strict consistence with itself. Self-contradiction is the only wrong.
Better spare to have of thine own, then aske of other men. [Better spare to have of thine own than ask of other men.]
In the world who knowes not to swimme, goes to the bottome. [In the world, who knows not to swim goes to the bottom.]
Your life has to consist of more than 'Black people should unite.' You hope they do, but not twenty-four hours a day.
Books are meat and medicine and flame and flight and flower steel, stitch, cloud and clout, and drumbeats on the air.
We have come into this exquisite world to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom and light!