Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am charmed by concrete poetry (but it's very hard to do well, I think) and in general by the idea of mixing the visual and the textual.
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the proneness of the human mind to take miracles as evidence, and to seek for miracles as evidence.
All pains the immortal spirit must endure, All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow, Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.
In the morning I get out of bed, I brush my teeth, I wash my face, I get dressed in the clothes I like best. I want to be good to myself.
The body is a universe in itself and must be held as sacred as anything in creation....It is dangerous to forget the body as sacramental.
He [the cat] wound himself around her legs, purring the purr of ardent desire like a kettle coming to a boil and then bubbling very fast.
All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.
What's endlessly complicated in thinking about women's gymnastics is the way that vulnerability and power are threaded through the sport.
When I knew what I had to do / I took all my notebooks, all my manuscripts / and ate them page by page / so I could take my words with me
But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!
The mysterious path goes inward. It is in us, and not anywhere else, where the eternity of the worlds, the past and the future are found.
By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death
Indoors or out, no one relaxes In March, that month of wind and taxes, The wind will presently disappear, The taxes last us all the year.
Letting the facts speak for themselves is an immoral principle when we all know that facts and figures can be selected to prove anything.
Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to.
It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed for all eternity than to conceive a being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
Listen to these young poets and you'll discover the voice of the present and hear the voice of the future before the future is even here.
The observances of the church concerning feasts and fasts are tolerably well kept, since the rich keep the feasts and the poor the fasts.
Nothing is uglier than the sinner, nothing so leprous or fetid; the scar of his crimes is still raw, and he stinks like the cave of Hell.
Verse should be as natural As the small tuber that feeds on muck And grows slowly from obtuse soil To the white flower of immortal beauty
A person isn't who they are during the last conversation you had with them - they're who they've been throughout your whole relationship.
Take your well-disciplined strengths, stretch them between the two great opposing poles, because inside human beings is where God learns.
Try to put well in practice what you already know. In so doing, you will, in good time, discover the hidden things you now inquire about.
If I ever make a hole in one, A thrill that I've never known, I won't be believed and I'll have no fun, For I'm sure to be playing alone.
The sin of pride is the sin of sins; in which all subsequent sins are included, as in their germ; they are but the unfolding of this one.
A strong, brave man is born each month, each year God gives a sage to men, A poet each ten years, perhaps, but an unselfish person,—when?
If they don't read, if they don't love reading; if they don't find themselves compulsively reading, I don't think they're really a writer
I loved to read, but I always thought that the dream was too far away. The person who had written the book was a god, it wasn't a person.
You call for faith: I show you doubt, to prove that faith exists. The more of doubt, the stronger faith, I say, If faith o'ercomes doubt.
A house is never perfectly furnished for enjoyment unless there is a child in it rising three years old, and a kitten rising three weeks.
Everyday I think about dying About disease, starvation, violence, terrorism, war, the end of the world. It helps keep my mind off things.
Poverty is not for the sake of hardship. No, it is there because nothing exists but Allah. Poverty unlocks the door - what a blessed key!
Its good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.
With passion pray. With passion make love. With passion eat and drink and dance and play. Why look like a dead fish in this ocean of God?
A servant wants to be rewarded for what he does. A lover wants only to be in love's presence, that ocean whose depth will never be known.
Like a sculptor, if necessary, carve a friend out of stone. Realize that your inner sight is blind and try to see a treasure in everyone.
We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change. Lukewarm won't do. Halfhearted holding back, well-enough getting by? Not here.
Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold.
The world is known by the senses The senses are known by the mind The mind is known by Consciousness And Consciousness is known by itself
All in November's soaking mist We stand and prune the naked tree, While all our love and interest Seem quenched in the blue-nosed misery.
This place of mine never is entered by humans come for conversation, only by the mute moon's light shafts that slip in between the trees.
Go! you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away! There 's such a charm in melancholy I would not if I could be gay.
Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.
Every human feeling is greater and larger than its exciting cause-a proof, I think, that man is designed for a higher state of existence.
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.
Not sorry, not calling, not crying All will pass like smoke of white apple trees Seized by the gold of autumn, I will no longer be young.
A really good stand-up comic is a poet; it's about the use of language. It can be really poetic. And I like politically conscious comedy.
Mud and rain and wretchedness and blood. Why should jolly soldier-boys complain? God made these before the roofless Flood - Mud and rain.
The grand irony, however, is that Southern segregation was not brought to an end, nor redneck violence dramatically reduced, by violence.
...few young poets [are] testing their poems against the ear. They're writing for the page, and the page, let me tell you, is a cold bed.