Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,And speed glum heroes up the line of death.
Let my soul, a shining tree, Silver branches lift towards thee, Where on a hallowed winter's night The clear-eyed angels may alight.
If you ask people if they enjoy crime novels, they'll say, 'Oh, my guilty pleasure is...' then name a really brilliant crime writer.
I remember coming upon Philip Larkin in my 20s in the early '60s and when Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" came out it knocked me off my feet.
But self-abasement is just inverted egoism. Anyone who acts with genuine humility will be as far from humiliation as from arrogance.
The religion of Christianity Is mixed of sweetness and cruelty Reject this Sweetness, for she wears A smoky dress out of hell fires.
Sister Simplicitie! Sing, sing a song to me,-- Sing me to sleep! Some legend low and long, Slow as the summer song Of the dull Deep.
I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.
The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.
One joins the movement in a valueless world, Choosing it, till both hurler and the hurled, One moves as well, always toward, toward.
I beg you come tonight and dine A welcome waits you and sound wine The Roederer chilly to a charm As Juno's breasts the claret warm.
Except the Christ be born again tonight In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame, The world will never see his kingdom bright.
Amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.
The future has several names. For the weak, it is impossible; for the fainthearted, it is unknown; but for the valiant, it is ideal.
Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.
A language does not become fixed. The human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it.
Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture.
Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing, I tread day and night such roads.
We must be free for the truth; and conversely, to be able to be open toward the truth may be our deepest freedom as human creatures.
Earth in beauty dressed Awaits returning spring. All true love must die, Alter at the best Into some lesser thing. Prove that I lie.
Gaze no more in the bitter glass The demons, with their subtle guile, Lift up before us when they pass, Or only gaze a little while.
And I will find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,/ Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.
The fascination of what's difficult Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent Spontaneous joy and natural content Out of my heart.
Things thought too long can be no longer thought, For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth, And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind.
If Michael, leader of God's host When Heaven and Hell are met, Looked down on you from Heaven's door-post He would his deeds forget.
The summer morn is bright and fresh, the birds are darting by. As if they loved to breast the breeze that sweeps the cool clear sky.
What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?
The instant trivial as it is is all we have unless-unless things the imagination feeds upon, the scent of the rose, startle us anew.
Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat, To peep at such a world; to see the stir Of the Great Babel, and not feel the crowd.
To God be humble, to thy friend be kind, and with thy neighbors gladly lend and borrow; His chance tonight, it maybe thine tomorrow.
I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.
I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?
And when I am forgotten, as I shall be, And asleep in dull cold marble, where no mention Of me must be heard of, say, I taught thee.
O' thinkest thou we shall ever meet again? I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our times to come.
Why are our bodies soft, and weak, and smooth But that our soft conditions and our hearts Should well agree with our external parts?
Comets importing change of times and states, Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky And with them scourge the bad revolting stars.
I thank God I am not a woman, to be touched in so many giddy offences as He hath generally taxed their whole their whole sex withal.
Why, headstrong liberty is lashed with woe. There's nothing situate under heaven's eye But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky.
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men; And being men, hearing the will of Caesar, It will inflame you, it will make you mad.
If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, complexions that liked me and breaths that I defied not
What's to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth's a stuff will not endure.
By the apostle Paul, shadows tonight Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers.
The mightier man, the mightier is the thing That makes him honored or begets him hate; For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
I see men's judgments are A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward Do draw the inward quality after them, To suffer all alike.
Speak, what trade art thou? Why, sir, a carpenter. Where is thy leather apron and thy rule? What does thou with thy best apparel on?
It is my soul that calls upon my name; How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night, like softest music to attending ears! -Romeo
A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of angelic light
Books! tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it.