Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No, make me mistress to the man I love; If there be yet another name more free More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here.
The existence of the soldier, next to capital punishment, is the most grievous vestige of barbarism which survives among men.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, Rising thro' the mellow shade, Glitter like a swarm of fire-flies, Tangled in a silver braid.
Any man that walks the mead In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find, According as his humors lead, A meaning suited to his mind.
When the wind blows through a wood, its mass is cut and closed by every leaf, forming a train of jittery vortices in the air.
I have been wrathful all my life, angry against my father and all others. My wrath must end. All my images now are of heaven.
Therefore with idle hands and head I sit In late December before the fire's daze Punished by crimes of which I would be quit.
I had kept opaque Down deeper than the canyons undersea The sullen spectrum of a buried lake Nobody saw; not seen even by me.
My work is mostly about longing, human relationships, science and children - and a little bit about ghosts and reincarnation.
I'm not being naive; I realise there's no such thing as a pure reading. But I'd rather keep myself as far out of it as I can.
I tell it stories now and then and feed it images like honey. I will not speculate today with poems that think they're money.
Young poets are advised by their elders to avoid the practice of journalism as they would wet socks and gin before breakfast.
If the art of poetry is?the art of making sense of the chaos of human experience, it's not a bad thing to see a lot of chaos.
And almost every one, when age, Disease, or sorrows strike him, Inclines to think there is a God, Or something very like him.
I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; garlands from window to window; golden chains from star to star, and I dance.
No mortal eye has ever fully seen a flash of lightning ... for no matter how firmly we look, our eyes are sure to be dazzled.
A lot of what we say and do are regurgitated things that have to do with what we think we're supposed to be saying and doing.
I used to be mad, at first, that I couldn't sound like Ice Cube. And I think that was probably one of the best things for me.
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
If we do not learn by heart, the heart does not feel the rhythms of poetry as echoes or variations of its own insistent beat.
If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.
Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.
Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends
There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.
The true voyagers are those who go for the sake of traveling . . . and without quite knowing why, they say, 'Let us depart!'.
It would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of masculine beauty is Satan, as portrayed by Milton.
my youth, one time, that time I knew even through the nothingness, it was a celebration of something not to do but only know.
I travel light; as light, that is, as a man can travel who will still carry his body around because of its sentimental value.
It is in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says, 'Nothing good came of this' is not yet listening.
When a great ship is in harbor and moored, it is safe, there can be no doubt. But that is not what great ships are built for.
Cynicism means the conduit to the soul has a great kink in it, like a garden hose in which nothing flows in either direction.
Conscience, that boon companion who sets a man free under the strong breastplate of innocence, that bids him on and fear not.
A myth is the name of a terrible lie told by a smelly little brown person to a man in a white suit with a pair of binoculars.
In addition to writing in received forms, I have also had fun making up forms - Möbius strips and visual poems, particularly.
My generation produced some terrific writers from all over, and the great thing about it is that they were all mixed in race.
American poetry is always about defining oneself individually,claiming one's right to be different and often to break taboos.
That's how it is sometimes--God comes to your window, all bright light and black wings, and you're just too tired to open it.
Every year, back comes Spring, with nasty little birds yapping their fool heads off and the ground all mucked up with plants.
Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.
...as for helping me in the outside world, the Convent taught me only that if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink.
O sweet spontaneous earth how often has the naughty thumb of science prodded thy beauty thou answereth them only with spring.
Proclaim your pride and bitterness loudly to the world, but to me speak softly, and tell me simply that she doesn't love you.
As soon as something happens to us in America, everyone begins talking about healing. But before you heal, you have to mourn.
Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed: Who does the best his circumstance allows Does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.
We wish our names eternally to live; Wild dream! which ne'er had haunted human thought, Had not our natures been eternal too.
Those old ages are like the landscape that shows best in purple distance, all verdant and smooth, and bathed in mellow light.
Can you conceive of anything that so represents the glory, and truth, and marvelousness of God's nature as the idea of peace?
Not in achievement, but in endurance, of the human soul, does it show its divine grandeur and its alliance with the infinite.
People loved to talk about how Frank O'Hara didn't really care about getting published. That doesn't jibe with my experience.