Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Cheat me not with time, with the dull ache of flesh, for all flesh turns, even the loveliest ankle and frail thigh, to bitterest dust.
Why do you hasten to remove anything which hurts your eye, while if something affects your soul you postpone the cure until next year?
The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.
I would advise him who wishes to imitate well, to look closely into life and manners, and thereby to learn to express them with truth.
The illustration which solves one difficulty by raising another, settles nothing. [Lat., Nil agit exemplum, litem quod lite resolvit.]
He will often have to scratch his head, and bite his nails to the quick. [To succeed he will have to puzzle his brains and work hard.]
How still the morning of the hallow'd day! Mute is the voice of rural labour, hush'd The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song.
God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness And find'st not Sinai, 'tis thy soul is poor.
Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.
Some questions cannot be answered. They become familiar weights in the hand, round stones pulled from the pocket, unyielding and cool.
One should stick to the sort of thing for which one was made; I tried to be an herbalist, Whereas I should keep to the butchers trade.
Work is its own best earthly meed, Else have we none more than the sea-born throng Who wrought those marvellous isles that bloom afar.
Receive no satisfaction for premeditated impertinence - forget it, forgive it - but keep him inexorably at a distance who of∣fered it.
Mistrust the man who finds everything good, the man who finds everything evil and still more the man who is indifferent to everything.
He is not dead who departs from life with a high and noble fame; but he is dead, even while living, whose brow is branded with infamy.
I conclude now I have no inner resources, because I am heavy bored. Peoples bore me, literature bores me, especially great literature.
The world is large when its weary leagues two loving hearts divide; But the world is small when your enemy is loose on the other side.
Busy old fool, unruly Sun, why dost thou thus through windows and through curtains call on us? Must to thy motions lovers seasons run?
It is a madness to make fortune the mistress of events, because in herself she is nothing, can rule nothing, but is ruled by prudence.
The Present, the Present is all thou hast For thy sure possessing; Like the patriarch's angel hold it fast Till it gives its blessing.
God blesses still the generous thought,And still the fitting word He speeds,And Truth, at His requiring taught,He quickens into deeds.
Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works.
Who can in reason then or right assume monarchy over such as live by right his equals, if in power or splendor less, in freedom equal?
None But such as are good men can give good things, And that which is not good, is not delicious To a well-govern'd and wise appetite.
The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.
You just go where poetry is, whether it's in your heart or your mind or in books or in places where there's live poetry or recordings.
The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think
The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet.
The short bloom of our brief and narrow life flies fast away. While we are calling for flowers and wine and women, old age is upon us.
An aphorism ought to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world like a little work of art and complete in itself like a hedgehog.
Just as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
We go through transformations when we are dealing with this world (spirit world). Go out and find whatever makes your spirit at peace.
Most musicians remain poor. But the music that they make, even if it does not bring them millions, gives millions of people happiness.
Oh, no! my heart can never be Again in lightest hopes the same; The love that lingers there for thee Hath more of ashes than of flame.
You know what they say, 'You have to work at wisdom; you have to take pains to be reasonable, but to be foolish, just let yourself go.
Out beyond our world there are, elsewhere, other assemblages of matter making other worlds. Ours is not the only one in air's embrace.
Modesty is invisibility... Never forget it. To be seen - to be seen - is to be... penetrated. What you must be girls, is impenetrable.
Every budding dictatorship begins by muzzling the artists, because they're a mouthy lot and they don't line up and salute very easily.
This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something that’s gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.
I am too old to have ever been very worried about what "genre" any given book of mine might be. I read everything. I am easily amused.
The phenomenon of university creative writing programs doesn't exist in France. The whole idea is regarded as a novelty, or an oddity.
I don't know whether a poem has be there to help to develop something. I think it's there for itself, for what the reader finds in it.
A good man doubles the length of his existence; to have lived so as to look back with pleasure on our past existence is to live twice.
A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry.
Come to me in my dreams, and then By day I shall be well again. For then the night will more than pay The hopeless longing of the day.
Morality represents for everybody a thoroughly definite and ascertained idea: the idea of human conduct regulated in a certain manner.
We always have to choose to live our lives to the fullest. No one is better or worse than anyone else. We are different and beautiful.
It looks as if I were meant to be alone, and that any hope of happiness is not meant. Am I too old to acquire the knack for happiness?