Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Zen is less the study of doctrine than a set of tools for discovering what can be known when the world is looked at with open eyes.
Continue reading Proust. His magnificent intelligence is particularly fond of describing stupidity. Which is ultimately exhausting.
The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee.
You are always concentrated on the inner thing. The moment one becomes aware of the crowd, performs for the crowd, it is spectacle.
From henceforth thou shalt learn that there is love To long for, pureness to desire, a mount Of consecration it were good to scale.
Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind; the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities.
Where's the mileage in an autobiography? Anyone who writes one inevitably casts themselves as a hero, and I'm not about to do that.
Shakespeare was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of the books to read nature; he looked inward, and found her there.
The propriety of thoughts and words, which are the hidden beauties of a play, are but confusedly judged in the vehemence of action.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.
The world is too brutal for me-I am glad there is such a thing as the grave-I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there.
Behold now this vast city [London]; a city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with His protection.
Yet hold it more humane, more heav'nly, first, By winning words to conquer willing hearts, And make persuasion do the work of fear.
How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!
I have to speak my mind. Because what is in my mind is always more interesting than what is happening in the world outside my mind.
Most Men are Cowards, all Men should be Knaves. The Difference lies, as far as I can see, Not in the thing it self, but the Degree.
There is indeed, perhaps, no better way to hold communion with the sea than sitting in the sun on the veranda of a fishermen's café
I grew up in the sort of cultural milieu that always regarded conversations about the political discourse as tremendously low-brow.
Weaknesses have a certain function in a poem... some strategy in order to pave the reader's way to the impact of this or that line.
I like the idea of isolation. I like the reality of it. You realize what you are... not that the knowledge is inevitably rewarding.
You have to let the world speak to you and then you speak, you know, so I'm in that moment now where I'm finding the world's voice.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-
The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors; everything depends on the money.
No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.[to feel unhappy you need the time to consider how your lot could be better]
Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for life is never so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
O fortunate bride, who never again will become elated after childbirth! O lucky older wife, who has been cured of feeling unwanted!
I hope that people will finally come to realize that there is only one 'race' - the human race - and that we are all members of it.
Did you love well what you very soon left? Come home and take me in your arms and take away this stomach ache, headache, heartache.
Then take me on your knee, mother; And listen, mother of mine. A hundred fairies danced last night, And the harpers they were nine.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
We can know a lot. And still, no doubt, there are rash and wonderful ideas brewing somewhere; there are many surprises yet to come.
A sweet attractive kinde of grace, A full assurance given by lookes, Continuall comfort in a face The lineaments of Gospell bookes.
Writing a poem is always a process of subtracting: you start with all of language available to you, and you choose a smaller field.
People "confess" can be wildly different. I might go into the confessional and say, "Father, what is my obsession with miniatures?"
The grand stye arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
I am a Liberal, yet I am a Liberal tempered by experience, reflexion, and renouncement, and I am, above all, a believer in culture.
All my closest friends came to me through poetry. My wife, too! Other than my family, poetry is the gravitational force of my life.
Failure would only be if you had somewhere stopped growing. As far as I can see the whole duty of the artist is to keep on growing.
Trump has officially changed his name to Ronald because he's such a clown, and in sympathy his toupée is changing its name to Bozo.
Good wine needs no bush, And perhaps products that people really want Need no hard-sell or soft-sell TV push. Why not? Look at pot.
As the mind of each man is conscious of good or evil, so does he conceive within his breast hope or fear, according to his actions.
By constant dripping, water hollows stone, A signet-ring from use alone grows thin, And the curved plowshare by soft earth is worn.
Last year I was a judge for a prize in England, the T.S. Eliot Prize, so I read everything that was published in England last year.
What one wrote playfully, another reads with tension and passion; what one wrote with tension and passion, another reads playfully.
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.
A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss, Goethe said; a correct answer, Gertrude would have said, is like a slap in the face.
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together to make a creature that will do what I say or love me back.
I'm battling monsters, I'm pulling you out of the burning buildings/ and you say I'll give you anything but you never come through.
Though man or angel judge my life and read it like an open scroll, And weigh my heart, I have judge more just than any—my own soul.