Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The work of art... is an instrument for tilling the human psyche, that it may continue to yield a harvest of vital beauty.
Simplicity is not a goal, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, as one approaches the real meaning of things.
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.
The mind is international and supra-national ... it ought to serve not war and annihilation, but peace and reconciliation.
In each individual the spirit is made flesh, in each one the whole of creation suffers, in each one a Savior is crucified.
Do not let any sweet-talking woman beguile your good sense with the fascinations of her shape. It's your barn she's after.
Maid of the luminous grey-eyes, Mistress of honey and marble implacable white thighs and Goddess, chaste daughter of Zeus.
In my garden the winds have beaten the ripe lilies; in my garden, the salt has wilted the first flakes of young narcissus.
The lofty pine is most easily brought low by the force of the wind, and the higher the tower the greater the fall thereof.
You traverse the world in search of happiness, which is within the reach of every man. A contented mind confers it on all.
I've never read a political poem that's accomplished anything. Poetry makes things happen, but rarely what the poet wants.
Poetry is a hazardous occupation, very hazardous. There may be bad things in there inside you that maybe you can't handle.
We find we breathe again, and hear the surgeon hum. Outside, in the street, a car starts up. The heart regularly Thunders.
There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.
The soil out of which such men as he are made is good to be born on, good to live on, good to die for and to be buried in.
Do not crowd the understanding; it can comprehend so much and no more. A pint pot will not contain the measure of a quart.
He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world.
Imitators are a slavish herd and fools in my opinion. [Fr., C'est un betail servile et sot a mon avis Que les imitateurs.]
My heart had a crush on him from the moment we met, but it was faint, and the rest of me stubbornly refused to play along.
Oh swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note Soft moves the dipping oar.
It's always good to show that poetry isn't the little depressed lyric people believe it to be, that it's something bigger.
Heap high the farmer's wintry hoard! Heap high the golden corn! No richer gift has Autumn poured From out her lavish horn!
Bards of Passion and of Mirth, Ye have left your souls on earth! Have ye souls in heaven too, Double-lived in regions new?
I must go down to the sea again For the call of the running tide It's a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.
And fast by, hanging in a golden chain, This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude, close by the moon.
I fled, and cry'd out, Death; Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sigh'd From all her caves, and back resounded, Death.
Before I married, I had three theories about raising children and no children. Now, I have three children and no theories.
Humans are vulnerable and rely on the kindnesses of the earth and the sun; we exist together in a sacred field of meaning.
We went from crop to crop, field to field. And my father had that army truck, a 1940s army truck from Fort Bliss, El Paso.
We live so little time in this world that it is no matter how wretched and miserable we are, if it prepares us for heaven.
Some men make money not for the sake of living, but ache In the blindness of greed and live just for their fortune's sake.
Great power which incites great envy, hurls some men to destruction; they are drowned in a long splendid stream of honors.
Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine.
Your confidence in the people, and your doubt about them, are closely related to your self-confidence and your self-doubt.
Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.
Spare me the political events and power struggles, as the whole earth is my homeland and all men are my fellow countrymen.
Pain and foolishness lead to great bliss and complete knowledge, for Eternal Wisdom created nothing under the sun in vain.
The aesthetic, as I understand it, is really about the way in which we understand beauty and speak and think about beauty.
To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.
Night's deepest gloom is but a calm; that soothes the weary mind: The labored days restoring balm; the comfort of mankind.
there is nothing so easy as to be wise for others; a species of prodigality, by-the-by - for such wisdom is wholly wasted.
It is amazing how much a thought expands and refines by being put into speech: I should think it could hardly know itself.
Looking for enlightenment is like looking for a flashlight when all you need the flashlight for is to find the flashlight.
All things keep on in everlasting motion, Out of the infinite come the particles, Speeding above, below, in endless dance.
Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.
It's only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you're telling it, to yourself or to someone else.
Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.
Out of the chill and the shadow, into the thrill and the shine. Out of the dearth and the famine, into the fulness divine.
O to be a dragon, a symbol of the power of Heaven-of silk-worm size or immense; at times invisible. Felicitous phenomenon!
Perhaps the hardest thing I've learned, and still struggle with, is that I don't have to be finished in order to be whole.