Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My mother turned into a professional widow. She couldnt understand why I wanted to be an engineer; she thought I should be a chicken farmer.
I grew up in a place in which, if you learned poetry, you shouted it out. Boys would scream it out and perform it and do it and flourish it.
The poem, in a sense, is no more or less than a little machine for remembering itself ... Poetry is therefore primarily a commemorative act.
When you have worked with people all day who have so little and struggle to make it stretch, who live outside the rarefied, you are humbled.
Because your eyes are slant and slow, Because your hair is sweet to touch, My heart is high again; but oh, I doubt if this will get me much.
Prince or commoner, tenor or bass, Painter or plumber or never-do-well, Do me a favor and shut your face - Poets alone should kiss and tell.
You have to believe in happiness, or happiness never comes Ah, that's the reason a bird can sing - On his darkest day he believes in spring.
Whatever's merely willful, and not miraculous (be never it so skilful) must wither fail and cease - but better than to grow beauty knows no.
The history of the development of contemporary writing in Vancouver from 1946 to 1960 is pretty largely a one-man show, and that man was me.
The living blind and seeing Dead together lie As if in love . . . There was no more hating then, And no more love; Gone is the heart of Man.
I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.
Earth does not understand her child, Who from the loud gregarious town Returns, depleted and defiled, To the still woods, to fling him down.
I was surprised recently to find a book called "Poetry in Persons" that's coming out about visit to poets to a class that Pearl London gave.
So, it's a continual process of trial and error and then I find things and I throw it out and start again, but I keep writing it over again.
Come, eate thy fill of this thy God's white loaf. It's food too fine for Angels, yet come, take and eate thy fill. It's Heaven's Sugar Cake.
Shall any gazer see with mortal eyes, Or any searcher know by mortal mind; Veil upon veil will lift but there must be Veil upon veil behind.
The universe is a vast system of exchange. Every artery of it is in motion, throbbing with reciprocity, from the planet to the rotting leaf.
I'd like to sit down with Hillary Clinton onstage and ask her about Glass Steagall and all the big banks and her own campaign contributions.
The curse of me and my nation is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort rather than no sort.
Yet the companions of the Muses will keep their collective nose in my books And weary with historical data, they will turn to my dance tune.
In any spirit that isn't deformed there is the belief in God. In any spirit that is not deformed there isn't the belief in a particular God.
And Burns--though brief the race he ran, Though rough and dark the paths he trod, Lived--died--in form and soul a man, The image of his God.
Yet have I ever heard it said that spies and tale-bearers have done more mischief in this world than poisoned bowl or the assassin's dagger.
Turn on the dream you lived through the unwavering gaze. It is as you thought: the living burn. In the floating days may you discover grace.
For of fortunes sharp adversitee The worst kynde of infortune is this, A man to han ben in prosperitee, And it remembren, whan it passed is.
As soon as the seal was clear of the water, it reared up and its skin slipped down to the sand. What had been a seal was a white-skinned boy
In this dim world of clouding cares, We rarely know, till wildered eyes See white wings lessening up the skies, The angels with us unawares.
The Moral is that gardeners pine, Whene'er no pods adorn the vine. Of all sad words experience gleans, The saddest are: It might have beans.
It's remarkable how many couples can precisely describe their particular pattern of painful fighting, and claim to be helpless to change it.
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment.
I bequeath all my property to my wife on the condition that she remarry immediately. Then there will be at least one man to regret my death.
There is only one writer in whom I find something that reminds me of the directness of style which is found in the Bible. It is Shakespeare.
When the day of misfortune comes and (comes it must sooner or later to all )we may be prepared with Christian fortitude to endure the shock.
I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was Autumn, and incessant Piped the quails from shocks and sheaves, And, like living coals, the apples Burned among the withering leaves.
By unseen hands uplifted in the light Of sunset, yonder solitary cloud Floats, with its white apparel blown abroad, And wafted up to heaven.
We have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.
Look: We hate nothing that exists, not even death, suffering and dying, does not horrify our souls, as long as we learn more deeply to love.
Love, the fairest among the undying gods, who loosens the limbs of all gods and men, conquers resolve and prudent counsel within the breast.
Success in the affairs of life often serves to hide one's abilities, whereas adversity frequently gives one an opportunity to discover them.
Our parents, worse than our grandparents, gave birth to us who are worse than they, and we shall in our turn bear offspring still more evil.
Virtue, dear friend, needs no defense, The surest guard is innocence: None knew, till guilt created fear, What darts or poisoned arrows were
Obvious enough that generalities work to protect the mind from the great outdoors; is it possible that this was in fact their first purpose?
Given all of the anti-Muslim propaganda that's being disseminated by The American Nazi media, you have to be careful. It can stress you out.
When the love of your life dies, the problem is not that some part of you dies too, which it does, but that some part of you is still alive.
But have you wine and music still,And statues and a bright-eyed love,And foolish thoughts of good and ill,And prayers to them who sit above?
The recollection of one upward hour Hath more in it to tranquilize and cheer The darkness of despondency, than years Of gayety and pleasure.
It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.
Not only around our infancy Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; Daily, with souls that cringe and plot, We Sinais climb and know it not.
It may be glorious to write Thoughts that shall glad the two or three High souls, like those far stars that come in sight Once in a century.