Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows, offer no angles to the wind. They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholes less than themselves.
Our present-day artists do not transform, they deform. That gives pleasure to nobody. It changes everything, therefore it changes nothing.
Men can be attracted but not forced to the faith. You may drive people to baptism, (but) you won't move them one step further in religion.
No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.
Who know but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind.
From the moment one sets up for an author, one must be treated as ceremoniously, that is as unfaithfully, "as a king's favorite or a king.
From sunny woof and cloudy weft Fell rain in sheets; so, to myself I hummed these hazard rhymes, and left The learned volume on the shelf.
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
And the sun went down, and the stars came out far over the summer sea, But never a moment ceased the fight of the one and the fifty-three.
And the stately ships go on To their haven under the hill; But O for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still!
Last night I fled until I came To streets where leaking casements dripped Stale lamplight from the corpse of flame; A nervous window bled.
Poets are always the advance guard of literature; the advance guard of life. It is for this reason that their recognition comes so slowly.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
If we had not winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one.
Dead drunk is the term I think of, insensible, neither cool nor warm, without a head or a foot. To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.
The deepest words of the wise man teach us the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows or the sound of the water when it is flowing.
Old things need not be therefore true, O brother men, nor yet the new; Ah! still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again!
Pleasure which must be enjoyed at the expense of another's pain, can never be enjoyed by a worthy mind. Pleasure's couch is virtues grave.
It is not being out at heels that makes a man discontented, it is being out at heart. To be contented is to be good friends with yourself.
When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.
People who publish poetry today do it from a sense that poetry needs to be published, not because they think they are going to make money.
There is often in people in whom 'the worst' has happened an almost transcendent freedom, for they have faced 'the worst' and survived it.
But here's the worst part: the trick to life lies in hiding from those we hold most dear how much they mean to is; if not, we'd lose them.
Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.
It was only the matter of a new voice. Nobody listened to an old voice anymore. Old voices became a part of one's self, like a fingernail.
Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.
Drawn by conceit from reason's plan How vain is that poor creature man; How pleas'd in ev'ry paltry elf To grate about that thing himself.
He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done.
This morning of the small snow I count the blessings, the leak in the faucet which makes of the sink time, the drop of the water on water.
An hour's conversation on literature between two ardent minds with a common devotion to a neglected poet is a miraculous road to intimacy.
Of Adam and Eve: They had what they wanted. That they did not like it when they got it does not alter the fact that they certainly got it.
In my plays I want to look at life - at the commonplace of existence-as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.
Rather than chairs and tables, I preferred the ground, trees, and caves, for in those places I felt I could lean against the cheek of God.
Ah, whither shall a maiden flee, When a bold youth so swift pursues, And siege of tenderest courtesy, With hope perseverant, still renews!
Pure essence, and pure matter, and the two joined into one were shot forth without flaw, like three bright arrows from a three-string bow.
Love, who insists that love shall mutual be, Link'd me to him with charm strong as our fates; Even now it leaves me not, as thou dost see.
Disney made a fortune out of inventing the businessman's idea of the imaginary as the contradictory of the businessman's idea of the real.
Without the compassionate understanding of the fear and trepidation that lie behind courageous speech, we are bound only to our arrogance.
We're moving toward the kind of work world which has less security. But we hope it has more creativity and possibility of real engagement.
Based on the law of probability Everything is possible because The sheer existence of possibility Confirms the existence Of impossibility.
That eagle's fate and mine are one, Which, on the shaft that made him die, Espied a feather of his own, Wherewith he wont to soar so high.
Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me That now she knows, When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be.
Not poppy, nor mandrake, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep, Which thou owest yesterday.
Duplicity is necessary in daily life, in that it covers many unpleasant things from sight, so they may not disturb the pleasure of others.
There's always some place to go. You don't need workshops, you don't need friends necessarily, you can be befriended by literature itself.
The elegy does the work of mourning; it allows us to experience mortality. It turns loss into remembrance, and it delivers an inheritance.
In the matter of faith, we have the added weight of hope to that of reason in the convictions which we sustain relating to a future state.
The brightest crowns that are worn in heaven have been tried, and smelted, and polished and glorified through the furnaces of tribulation.
Through every rift of discovery some seeming anomaly drops out of the darkness, and falls, as a golden link into the great chain of order.