Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Have Ithaka always in your mind. Your arrival there is what you are destined for. But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time.
Are you or aren't you convinced that weakness is a man's condition? How can you raise yourself if you haven't fallen first?
A work settles nothing, just as the labor of a whole generation settles nothing. Sons, and the morrow, always start afresh.
The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.
He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.
It’s never quite right, all the things we are taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we die, all the lives we live.
the writing of some men is like a vast bridge that carries you over the many things that claw and tear. The Wine of Forever
Bad luck for the young poet would be a rich father, an early marriage, an early success or the ability to do anything well.
Potential," I said, "doesn't mean a thing. You've got to do it. Almost every baby in a crib has more potential than I have.
A woman must be nursed into subsistence by love, where a man can become stronger by being hated." - from 'Cows in Art Class
Very few worries can stand against the influence of a good long walk ... How many petty annoyances have I thus walked away!
We must not look at goblin men, We must not buy their fruits: Who knows upon what soil they fed Their hungry thirsty roots?
Oh roses for the flush of youth, And laurel for the perfect prime; But pluck an ivy branch for me Grown old before my time.
It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says nothing good comes of this is not yet listening.
Men live best upon a little; Nature has given to all the privilege of being happy, if they but knew how to use their gifts.
The heavens call to you, and circle about you, displaying to you their eternal splendors, and your eye gazes only to earth.
The marvelous thing about a good question is that it shapes our identity as much by the asking as it does by the answering.
I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer. I have grown up believing it is a vocation, a religious vocation.
Art is History's nostalgia, it prefers a thatched roof to a concrete factory, and the huge church above a bleached village.
Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through, For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)
It snowed last year too: I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
It matters not what goal you seek - its secret here reposes: you've got to dig from week to week - to get results on roses.
Virginia Woolf, I enjoyed talking to her, but thought nothing of her writing. I considered her 'a beautiful little knitter.
I think it's true that that's something that poetry can go to school on fiction. I think poetry can go to fiction to learn.
I think that's a connection that you can only hope for. It's not something that you can make because it needs someone else.
I aspire to a poetry of great formal integrity, deep passion and high intellect, and I have many models for how to do that.
For when a woman is left too much alone, sooner or later she begins to think;- And no man knows what then she may discover.
Revolution does not insure progress. You may overturn thrones, but what proof that anything better will grow upon the soil?
Translated poetry filled the no-man's-land between my own work and other writers', and I found this fascinating to explore.
We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother - but... when she became our child, the affection came.
He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.
There is in Ammiel Alcalay’s work an unabashed tenderness for the world as it is, and that makes him courageous, different.
Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance... poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.
The problem with rich lists is... it is impossible to know what someone is worth until they have died and you have sold it.
Luxury is an enticing pleasure, a bastard mirth, which hath honey in her mouth, gall in her heart, and a sting in her tail.
Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.
Because I write intuitively and image-by-image and moment-by-moment, my writing has to be powered by feelings and emotions.
Dear is my friend--yet from my foe, as from my friend, comes good: My friend shows what I can do, and my foe what I should.
Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is even in the grave, And thou must die.
When we have begun to take charge of our lives, to own ourselves, there is no longer any need to ask permission of someone.
The artist looks for a subject. You know, a lot of new poets don't seem to have a subject. I don't totally understand that.
I tour more than I need to, more than is good for you. But it's my favorite part of music. I much prefer it to studio work.
I love men, not for what unites them, but for what divides them, and I want to know most of all what gnaws at their hearts.
All these words are just a front. What I would really like to do is chain you to my body, then sing for days & days & days.
After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they just can't face each other, but still they stay together.
It was Jung who first said to explain the symbol as if talking to a man from mars who knew nothing about our life on earth.
Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.
O gift of God! O perfect day: Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be!