Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The laws of God, the laws of man he may keep that will and can; not I: let God and man decree laws for themselves and not for me.
Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.
A certain traveler who knew many continents was asked what he found most remarkable of all. He replied: the ubiquity of sparrows.
Sun and wind and beat of sea, Great lands stretching endlessly... Where be bonds to bind the free? All the world was made for me!
The True Will is thus both determined by its equations, and free because those equation are simply its own name, spelt out fully.
30. If Will stops and cries Why, invoking Because, then Will stops an does naught. 31. If power asks why, then power is weakness.
There are some solitary wretches who seem to have left the rest of mankind, only, as Eve left Adam, to meet the devil in private.
Reason, however able, cool at best, Cares not for service, or but serves when prest, Stays till we call, and then not often near.
No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.
A man can bear a world's contempt when he has that within which says he's worthy. When he contemns himself, there burns the hell.
If Nature built by rule and square, Than man what wiser would she be? What wins us is her careless care, And sweet unpunctuality.
I wind about, and in and out, - With here a blossom sailing, - And here and there a lusty trout, - And here and there a grayling.
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnish'd dove; In the Spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
I am learning by the week, but my poesy is still not my own. New rhyme, new me me me in words. I am not all this carven rhetoric.
Today is ours; what do we fear? Today is ours: we have it here. Let's treat it kindly, that it may Wish at least with us to stay.
Of all animals, the cat alone attains to the comtemplative life. He regards the wheel of existence from without, like the Buddha.
I don't think the idea of homosexuality is really taboo any more. Our culture is evolving. This is an exciting time to be living.
Therefore the love which us doth bind, But fate so enviously debars, Is the conjunction of the mind, And opposition of the stars.
Englishmen are said to love their laws; - that is the reason, I suppose, they give us so many of them, and in different editions.
Writing is not complete when you've added everything you could, but rather, when you've taken away everything that is not needed.
Like other ghosts, she whispers; not for me to join her, but so that, when I'm close enough, she can push me back into the world.
My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat.
The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.
Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?
Those who would attain to any marked degree of excellence in a chosen pursuit must work, and work hard for it, prince or peasant.
Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories
That thorny path, those stormy skies, have drawn our spirits nearer; and rendered us, by sorrow's ties, each to the other dearer.
Besides the aesthetics, besides teaching an appreciation of T.S. Eliot, a basic need is fulfilled when you teach English at CUNY.
The truth is, every movie is a message movie. It's just that most movies have messages that are in lock step with the status quo.
[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.
You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.
It's always good when women win things in fiction because it tends to be more male-dominated, unlike poetry, which is more equal.
Here comes the time when, vibrating on its stem, every flower fumes like a censer; noises and perfumes circle in the evening air.
Torture, as the art of discovering the truth, is barbaric nonsense; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual end.
Drowsing, they take the noble attitude of a great sphinx, who, in a desert land, sleeps always, dreaming dreams that have no end.
Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.
and getting dressed we talk about what else there might be to do, but being together solves most of it, in fact, solves all of it
Somebody once asked me what my theory of life was, and I said, 'Don't try.' That fits the writing, too. I don't try; I just type.
what pudor pejorocracy affronts how awe, night-rest and neighborhood can rot what breeds where dirtiness is law what crawls below
The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair And I met with a ballad, I can't say where, That wholly consisted of lines like these.
I want to look at life - at the commonplaces of existence - as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.
For myself, solitude is rather like a folded-up forest that I carry with me everywhere and unfurl around myself when I have need.
A bird in the boughs sang "June," And "June" hummed a bee In a Bacchic glee As he tumbled over and over Drunk with the honey-dew.
Your fame is as the grass, whose hue comes and goes, and His might withers it by whose power it sprang from the lap of the earth.
You are made of bent coat hangers, honey, gravel, epoxy and handstands. I am made of lying on the floor, the same song on repeat.
Since there is no real silence, Silence will contain all the sounds, All the words, all the languages, All knowledge, all memory.
If you are only what you are, You at least have a chance Not to outsmart, But be on a par with yourself And that is worth trying.
For a few minutes, everything is so cute that the mind reels.... And then, believe it or not, things get worse. So I shot myself.
I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret; The code of night tapped on my tongue; What had been one was many sounding minded.
Whenever you think or you believe or you know, you're a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you're nobody-but-yourself.