Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When once the mind has raised itself to grasp and to delight in excellence, those who love most will be found to love most wisely.
It is a good thing to read books, and need not be a bad thing to write them, but in any case, it is a pious thing to collect them.
There are occasions when the general belief of the people, even though it be groundless, works its effect as sure as truth itself.
Courage, ne'er by sorrow broken! Aid where tears of virtue flow; Faith to keep each promise spoken! Truth alike to friend and foe!
Thats the way it is with poetry: When it is incomprehensible it seems profound, and when you understand it, it is only ridiculous.
Avoid,Profaneness; come not here: Nothing but holy, pure, and clear, Or that which groaneth to be so, May at his peril further go.
The best remedy against an ill man is much ground betweene both. [The best remedy against an ill man is much ground between both.]
My genius from a boy Has fluttered like a bird within my heart; But could not thus confined her power employ, Impatient to depart.
No, It's hard to uproot yourself and really become yourself in another soil, but it's also an opportunity, another kind of growth.
English has more flexibility. It's a very plastic, very shapeable, very expressive language. In that sense it feels quite natural.
Sweet May hath come to love us, Flowers, trees, their blossoms don; And through the blue heavens above us The very clouds move on.
A lonely fir-tree is standing On a northern barren height; It sleeps, and the ice and snow-drift Cast round it a garment of white.
Intuition is the very force or activity of the soul in its experience through whatever has been the experience of the soul itself.
Man is always more than he can know of himself; consequently, his accomplishments, time and again, will come as a surprise to him.
The day is done; and slowly from the scene the stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, and puts them back into his golden quiver!
Burn, O evening hearth, and waken Pleasant visions, as of old! Though the house by winds be shaken, Safe I keep this room of gold!
Lives of great men all remind us, we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire.
In every truth, the opposite is equally true. For example, a truth can only be expressed and enveloped in words if it is onesided.
How could I fail to be a lone wolf, and an uncouth hermit, as I did not share one of its aims nor understand one of its pleasures?
It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.
She did not look at the daffodils. They didn't mean anything. She looked at the daffodils. She said, 'Thank you for the daffodils.
Thoth, Hermes, the stylus, the palette, the pen, the quill endure, though our books are a floor of smouldering ash under our feet.
Rains driven by storms fall not perpetually on the land already sodden, neither do varying gales for ever disturb the Caspian sea.
The cautious wolf fears the pit, the hawk regards with suspicion the snare laid for her, and the fish the hook in its concealment.
"Chocolate mustache" is from a line in the book. It's my favorite title (chosen by me), so I'm pleased that Never Spit was tossed.
[Gertrude Stein] really needed someone like Virgil Thomson, whom she respected, to sit on her a bit and make her devise some plot.
There is only one thing better than tradition and that is the original and eternal life out of which all tradition takes its rise.
Praise follows truth afar off, and only overtakes her at the grave; plausibility clings to her skirts and holds her back till then
Some kind of pace may be got out of the eeriest jade by the near prospect of oats; but the thoroughbred has the spur in his blood.
All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.
People's backyards are much more interesting than their front gardens, and houses that back on to railways are public benefactors.
The success of the poem is determined not by how much the poet felt in writing it, but by how much the reader feels in reading it.
As they used to say on Stingray, ‘Anything can happen in the next half hour’. I’ve always tried to live with that thought in mind.
I do not love a man, except I hate his vices, because those vices are the enemies, and the destruction of that friend whom I love.
Far beneath the tainted foamThat frets above our peaceful home,We dream in joy and wake in loveNor know the rage that yells above.
What then in love can woman do? If we grow fond they shun us. And when we fly them, they pursue: But leave us when they've won us.
We shape ourselves the joy or fear Of which the coming life is made, And fill our Future's atmosphere With sunshine or with shade.
Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storm and flood, To one fixed trust my spirit clings; I know that God is good!
Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry; Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his "Highland Mary!"
I equally dislike the favor of the public with the love of a woman - they are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence.
A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.
Perplexed and troubled at his bad success The Tempter stood, nor had what to reply, Discovered in his fraud, thrown from his hope.
We read not that Christ ever exercised force but once; and that was to drive profane ones out of his Temple, not to force them in.
Our universities are so determined to impose tolerance that they'll expel you for saying what you think and never notice the irony
A breath, whence no man knows, Swaying the grating weeds, it blows; It comes, it grieves, it goes. Once it rocked the summer rose.
After having exhausted all the arguments on behalf of evil, one utters the creed's dictums with nostalgia rather than with fervor.
If it were possible to meet the Beloved while laughing and in a state of comfort, why should one suffer the anguish of separation?
I've come to see conspiracy theories as the refuge of those who have lost their natural curiosity and ability to cope with change.
I am learning to see loneliness as a seed that, when planted deep enough, can grow into writing that goes back out into the world.