Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Silent people are dangerous; others are not so. [Fr., Les gens sans bruit sont dangereux; Il n'en est pas ainsi des autres.]
some genius of the South With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth, Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
I believe this earth on which we stand is but the vestibule to glorious mansions through which a moving crowd forever press.
Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so. After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns, we ourselves flash and yearn
I have a Vision of the Future, chum. The workers flats in fields of soya beans tower up like silver pencils, score on score.
There is in every miracle a silent chiding of the world, and a tacit reprehension of them who require, or who need miracles.
Thine to work as well as pray, Clearing thorny wrongs away; Plucking up the weeds of sin, Letting heaven's warm sunshine in.
The green earth sends her incense up. From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewey cup She pours her sacred wine.
The dreariest spot in all the land to Death they set apart; with scanty grace from Nature's hand, and none from that of Art.
No institution which does not continually test its ideals, techniques and measure of accomplishment can claim real vitality.
So glistered the dire Snake , and into fraud Led Eve, our credulous mother, to the Tree Of Prohibition, root of all our woe.
Knowledge forbidden? Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord Envy them that? Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?
In Physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors.
God bless our good and gracious King, Whose promise none relies on; Who never said a foolish thing, Nor ever did a wise one.
I think I am probably in love with silence, that other world. And that I write, in some way, to negotiate seriously with it.
It doesn't make any sense. If the SIM are policemen, secret or not, shouldn't we trust them instead of being afraid of them?
The greatest reverence is due to a child! If you are contemplating a disgraceful act, despise not your child's tender years.
Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.
When you love you should not think you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.
The true wealth of a nation lies not in it's gold or silver but in it's learning, wisdom and in the uprightness of its sons.
That deed which in our guilt we today call weakness, will appear tomorrow as an essential link in the complete chain of Man.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
Gather out of star-dust, Earth-dust, Cloud-dust, Storm-dust, And splinters of hail, One handful of dream-dust, Not for sale.
We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.
When you're young, everything seems like a romance. At 96, I can still feel romantic about publishing young unknown writers.
I'm an only child and an American and am wholly in favor of uniqueness of voice in everything, especially music and writing.
In sad truth, half our forebodings of our neighbors are but our own wishes, which we are ashamed to utter in any other form.
And fathers are a blessing, too, they give the place a tone; In fact each child should try and have some parents of its own.
I took a wrong turn the other day. A mistake, but it led me to the shop where I found the very thing I’d been searching for.
How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings. [Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!]
When you understand just how big the Universe is, you then realize that only idiots fight over an area of space called land.
You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.
Today on the way home, it snows. Big, soft caressing flakes fall onto our skin like cold moths; the air fills with feathers.
Here and there are worms, evidence of the fertility of the soil, caught by the sun, half dead; flexible and pink, like lips.
Publishers are in business to make money, and if your books do well they don't care if you are male, female, or an elephant.
I was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey; it seemed unfair to me, even then.
In very truth it is the unattained which gives zest to the commonplace and brims the cup of our daily life with keenest joy.
The shreiking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water.
Age about 30, I stopped looking up my books in bookstores. Paying attention to the marketplace isn't a healthy thing for me.
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
The hardest thing we are asked to do in this world is to remain aware of suffering, suffering about which we can do nothing.
Gradually I became aware that professing English because I loved poems was like practicing vivisection because I loved dogs.
I was adopted when I was a baby. My mother carried me for nine months and she held me for one hour, and didn't see me again.
I don't know if it's so grand that I can change the entire world, but I know that I can help one person. So that's the goal.
I'd fully taken the road many people start on, but most abandon: common sense had given me a miss, and I'd become an artist.
I manage a toast to the Christmas tree and one to the sweet absurdity in the miracle of the verb to be. Lucky you, lucky me.
Death a friend that alone can bring the peace his treasures cannot purchase, and remove the pain his physicians cannot cure.
I drink because she nags, she said I nag because he drinks. But if the truth be known to you, He's a lush and she's a shrew.
Every Englishman is convinced of one thing, viz.: That to be an Englishman is to belong to the most exclusive club there is.
As many as the shells that are on the shore, so many are the pains of love; the darts that wound are steeped in much poison.