Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The best poem is that whose worked-upon unmagical passages come closest, in texture and intensity, to those moments of magical accident.
Let must or if be damned with whomever's afraid down with ought with because with every brain which thinks it thinks, nor dares to feel.
I went to Boston fully expecting to be arrested - arrested by a polizia created by a government that my ancestors rebelled to establish.
I'm so tired of hearing about 'Renascence,' I'm nearly dead. I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion.
You're alone with yourself and your own feelings and that gives you deeper access to what you need to get in touch with to write poetry.
My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader.
Poems mesmerized me, and I felt better when I was writing them, or trying to - more in touch with something deep and dark within myself.
A Deity believed, is joy begun; A Deity adored, is joy advanced; A Deity beloved, is joy matured. Each branch of piety delight inspires.
But love, like wine, gives a tumultuous bliss, Heighten'd indeed beyond all mortal pleasures; But mingles pangs and madness in the bowl.
Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong! Tell me, O Lord--tell me, O Lord, how long Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross!
Public feeling now is apt to side with the persecuted, and our modern martyr is full as likely to be smothered with roses as with coals.
I love Nicolas de Stael particularly, and my work can remind people of him. But looked at attentively, our works are not similar at all.
A man's hope measures his civilization. The attainability of the hope measures, or may measure, the civilization of his nation and time.
The night below. We two. Crystal of pain. You wept over great distances. My ache was a clutch of agonies over your sickly heart of sand.
To love is to tire of being alone; it is therefore a cowardice, a betrayal of ourselves. (It is exceedingly important that we not love.)
...the painful intensity of my sensations, even when they're happy ones; the blissful intensity of my sensations, even when they're sad.
Your poems are of interest to mankind; your liver isn't. Drink till you write well and feel sick. Bless your poems and be damned to you.
All afternoon in the deck chair, I try to describe to my notebook the colors of the water and sky. How to translate sunlight into words?
An exile, ill in heart and frame,-- A wanderer, weary of the way;-- A stranger, without love's sweet claim On any heart, go where I may!
As freely as the firmament embraces the world, or the sun pours forth impartially his beams, so mercy must encircle both friend and foe.
However far I gaze Neither cherry blossoms nor Crimson leaves are in sight. Only a fisherman's hut on the shore In the autumnal evening.
If, after obtaining Buddhahood, anyone in my land gets tossed in jail on a vagrancy rap, may I not attain highest perfect enlightenment.
Without the story - in which everyone living, unborn and dead, participates - men are no more than bits of paper blown on the cold wind.
If the best company is that which we leave feeling most satisfied with ourselves, it follows that it is the company we leave most bored.
Leaves like rusty tin for the desolate mind that has seen the end- the barest glimmerings. Leaves aswirl with gulls made wild by winter.
One must flee those places where life throbs and seek out lonely spots untouched by human hand in order to lift the magic veil of nature
Pulling out the chair beneath your mind And watching you fall upon God What else is there for Hafiz to do that is any fun in this world!
Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love.
The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.
On the king's gate the moss grew gray;The king came not. They called him deadAnd made his eldest son one daySlave in his father's stead.
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said, That of our vices we can frame A ladder, if we will but tread Beneath our feet each deed of shame.
Day, like a weary pilgrim, had reached the western gate of heaven, and Evening stooped down to unloose the latchets of his sandal shoon.
But the great Master said, "I see No best in kind, but in degree; I gave a various gift to each, To charm, to strengthen, and to teach".
These are the sensations and feelings that are gradually blunted by education, staled by custom, rejected in favor of social conformity.
What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.
He saw that the water continually flowed and flowed and yet it was always there; it was always the same and yet every moment it was new.
What for me is bliss and life and ecstasy and exaltation, the world in general seeks at most in imagination; in life it finds it absurd.
So the people will pay the penalty for their kings' presumption, who, by devising evil, turn justice from her path with tortuous speech.
Take what the old-church found in Mithra's tomb, candle and script and bell, take what the new-church spat upon and broke and shattered.
And I endeavour to subdue circumstances to myself, and not myself to circumstances. [Lat., Et mihi res, non me rebus, subjungere conor.]
Never inquire into another man's secret; bur conceal that which is intrusted to you, though pressed both be wine and anger to reveal it.
It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Live bravely and present a brave front to adversity.
I 'd rather be handsome than homely; I 'd rather be youthful than old; If I can't have a bushel of silver I'll do with a barrel of gold.
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change... [Truth's] mirror is turned forward, to reflect The promise of the future, not the past.
From lower to the higher next, Not to the top, is Nature's text; And embryo Good, to reach full stature, Absorbs the Evil in its nature.
An angel stood and met my gaze, Through the low doorway of my tent; The tent is struck, the vision stays; I only know she came and went.
The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate
Poems . . . are perfume bottles momentarily unstopped - what they release is volatile and will vanish, and yet it can be released again.
The supersession of dualism in biology begins to occur in this science at the moment when the ‘time’ factor is taken into consideration.
It is one of my favorite thoughts that God manifests Himself to men in all the wise, good, humble, generous, great, and magnanimous men.