Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I cast my heart into my rhymes, That you, in the dim coming times, May know how my heart went with them After the red-rose-bordered hem.
My curse on plays That have to be set up in fifty ways, On the day's war with every knave and dolt, Theater business, management of men.
The desire that is satisfied is not a great desire, nor has the shoulder used all its might that an unbreakable gate has never strained.
Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues That live among the clouds, and flush the air, Lingering, and deepening at the hour of dews.
A poem is this:/A nuance of sound/delicately operating/upon a cataract of sense/...the particulars/of a song waking/upon a bed of sound.
We are never more in danger than when we think ourselves most secure, nor in reality more secure than when we seem to be most in danger.
Shakespeare and Rembrandt have in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion.
Tis much when sceptres are in children's hands, But more when envy breeds unkind division: There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.
I am a subject, And I challenge law. Attorneys are denied me, And therefore personally I lay my claim To my inheritance of free descent.
Shall we upon the footing of our land Send fair-play orders, and make compromise, Insinuation, parley, and base truce, To arms invasive?
O! that a man might know The end of this day's business, ere it come; But it sufficeth that the day will end, And then the end is known.
Tush! Fear not, my lord, we will not stand to prate; Talkers are no good doers: be assured We come to use our hands and not our tongues.
Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country, as the behavior of the country is most mockable at the court.
Before thee stands this fair Hesperides, With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched; For death-like dragons here affright thee hard.
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.
Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.
The earth says have a place, be what that place requires; hear the sound the birds imply and see as deep as ridges go behind each other.
Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.
No motion has she now, no force; she neither hears nor sees; rolled around in earth's diurnal course, with rocks, and stones, and trees.
But how can he expect that others should Build for him, sow for him, and at his call Love him, who for himself will take no heed at all?
If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster
Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.
I do not think [poetry] is more, or less, necessary than food, shelter, health, education, decent working conditions. It is as necessary.
Often my creative life has seemed like a long tunnel, dark and damp. And sometimes I wondered whether I could live through it. But I did!
I can imagine myself on my death-bed, spent utterly with lust to touch the next world, like a boy asking for his first kiss from a woman.
Dear, damned, distracting town, farewell! Thy fools no more I'll tease: This year in peace, ye critics, dwell, Ye harlots, sleep at ease!
How do we know that we have a right to kill creatures that we are so little above, as dogs, for our curiosity or even for some use to us?
If you do your fair day's work, you are certain to get your fair day's wage - in praise or pudding, whichever happens to suit your taste.
Death, which we are accustomed to consider an evil, really acts for us the friendliest part, and takes away the commonplace of existence.
Honour is manly decency. The shame of being found wanting in it means everything to us. Is this, then, the indefinable, the sacred thing?
On all things created remaineth the half-effaced signature of God, Somewhat of fair and good, though blotted by the finger of corruption.
The faculty of doubting is rare among men. A few choice spirits carry the germs of it in them, but these do not develop without training.
The average political poem - especially the kind that wears this label all too proudly - is both dull and full of brow-beating triteness.
No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot survivor of that time, that place.
All myth is an enriched pattern, a two-faced proposition, allowing its operator to say one thing and mean another, to lead a double life.
Come, my pretender, my fritter, my bubbler, my chicken biddy! Oh succulent one, it is but one turn in the road and I would be a cannibal!
There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.
I've been building a fiction in part around the Marfa poem since my brief residency there, which has kept it from receding into the past.
I became a sceptic of one way of seeing the world. And I think it is what started me in my awareness that any worldview is superstitious.
There are a few things that'll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is, when they've been used several times, they no longer work.
If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself.
there is this malign curse laid on dipsomaniacs. That they must absolutely have a drink: in order to feel strong enough to stop drinking.
One should always be drunk. That's all that matters...But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.
It is easy to understand why the rabble dislike cats. A cat is beautiful; it suggests ideas of luxury, cleanliness, voluptuous pleasures.
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered by will, a childhood how equipped for self-expression with an adult's capacities.
We are like roses that have never bothered to bloom when we should have bloomed and it is as if the sun has become disgusted with waiting
if you think they didn't go crazy in tiny rooms just like you're doing now without women without food without hope then you're not ready.
All my ambition is, I own, to profit and to please unknown; like streams supplied from springs below, which scatter blessings as they go.
For Emily Dickinson every philosophical idea was a potential lover. Metaphysics is the realm of eternal seduction of the spirit by ideas.