Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
rummaging in the storehouses of religious or literary history for myth-matter for ideational uses is of the nature of spiritual vulgarity.
Everyone is here on earth as an artist; to tell his particular story or sing her irreplaceable song; to leave a unique creative signature.
The more I read my poems, the more I find out about them. I still read them with the same passion I felt when I wrote them as a young man.
Laughter shall drown the raucous shout; And, though these shelt'ring walls are thin, May they be strong to keep hate out And hold love in.
Do we not see all humans unaware Of what they want, and always searching everywhere, And changing place, as if to drop the load they bear?
Par toi tout le bonheur que m'offre l'avenir Est dans mon souvenir. Through you, all the happiness that the future offers Is in my memory.
You may not be able to alter reality, but you can alter your attitude towards it, and this, paradoxically, alters reality. Try it and see.
Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.
I used to think of my body as an instrument, of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will.
When a man is attacked in print, it's usually for saying what he says; when a woman is attacked in print, it's often for being who she is.
Eating is our earliest metaphor, preceding our consciousness of gender difference, race, nationality, and language. We eat before we talk.
The body is so easily damaged, so easily disposed of, water and chemicals is all it is, hardly more to it than a jellyfish drying on sand.
Broadly speaking, nervous women may be divided into two classes - those who are really nervous, and those who imagine themselves to be so.
When I work I am pure as an angel tiger and clear is my eye and hot my brain and silent all the whining grunting piglets of the appetites.
In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself. I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity.
The Irish say your trouble is their trouble and your joy their joy? I wish I could believe it; I am troubled, I'm dissatisfied, I'm Irish.
There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.
I'm partial to coffee shops, brain work, and poems on the page. I write after midnight. Sometimes, twisty syntax happens, and I surrender.
When a person understands what sort of existence a human being is, and what exactly the "self" is, that person has been liberated forever.
Yes! in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.
It's the song in your heart that wants you to help make yourself a better person, and to help other people do the same. Everybody has one.
There is an extraordinary degree of amity among Washington poets. They hang together. You would be hard pressed to find that in Manhattan.
Where music thundered let the mind be still, Where the will triumphed let there be no will, What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.
I really like when people do 'stream of consciousness' tweeting, or when people's tweets come across as sort of manic and mostly unedited.
A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them.
Oh, heart, let's never grow too old To smile anew, when Christmas comes, At tassels red and tinsel thread, And tarlatan bags f sugarplums.
our limbs which had already traveled far beyond her world, carrying the click of distances in the smooth, untroubled soles of their shoes.
All I write about is what's happened to me and to people I know, and the better I know them, the more likely they are to be written about.
Philosophy can bake no bread; but she can procure for us God, Freedom, Immortality. Which, then, is more practical, Philosophy or Economy?
Stuyvesant chats with Kelly and Katz, The professor warms to the broker, And life is good in the brotherhood Of an air-conditioned smoker.
Then here's to the heartening wassail, Wherever good fellows are found; Be its master instead of its vassal, and order the glasses around.
I've spent much of my life being attuned to watching for an image or a phrase that can trigger what might be a poem - could become a poem.
I think parts of my soul have been saved by my writing, not in the sense of escaping death, but escaping the death of the moment, perhaps.
Like a glowworm golden, in a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden its aerial blue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view.
Obey thy genius, for a minister it is unto the throne of fate. Draw to thy soul, and centralize the rays which are around of the Divinity.
The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise.
Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.
If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity does not help.
As a child I thought it was very boring when I had to sit with [my mother] on the city streets, but the time sank deep and surfaced later.
When anger rushes unrestrained to action, like a hot steed, it stumbles on its way. The man of thought strikes deepest and strikes safely.
But I can tell - let truth be told - That love will change in growing old; Though day by day is nought to see, So delicate his motions be.
Popularity isn't just something that happens. You have to give something in exchange for it, and that's the dangerous part of the process.
Auld Nature swears the lovely dears Her noblest work she classes, O; Her 'prentice han' she tried on man, And then she made the lasses, O!
It is hard going to the door cut so small in the wall where the vision which echoes loneliness brings a scent of wild flowers in the wood.
That day she put our heads together, Fate had her imagination about her, Your head so much concerned with outer, Mine with inner, weather.
Yet some say Love by being thrall And simply staying possesses all In several beauty that Thought fares far To find fused in another star.
An indigenous feminism has been present in every culture in the world and in every period of history since the suppression of women began.
What would we do without irony? Check out your own daily reliance on it, the foul-weather friend who's there for you when nothing else is.
My veins do not end in me but in the unanimous blood of those who struggle for life, love, things, landscape and bread, the poetry of all.
Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.