Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Gold delights to walk through the very midst of the guard, and to break its way through hard rocks, more powerful in its blow than lightning.
All belief that does not make us more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, a mistaken and superstitious belief.
Depend on no man, on no friend but him who can depend on himself. He only who acts conscientiously toward himself, will act so toward others.
The quicker, the louder, the applause with which another tries to gain you over to his purpose - the bitterer his censure if he miss his aim.
A beautiful smile is to the female countenance what the sunbeam is to the landscape; it embellishes an inferior face and redeems an ugly one.
Oh Wasn't it naughty of Smudges? Oh, Mummy, I'm sick with disgust. She threww me in front of the judges, And my silly old collar-bone's bust.
The main thing a poem ought to be is musical. It should be rhythmic. You should hear it as a musical piece in your head as you're writing it.
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
Democracy is essentially anti-authoritarian--that is, it not only demands the right but imposes the responsibility of thinking for ourselves.
For still the new transcends the old In signs and tokens manifold; Slaves rise up men; the olive waves, With roots deep set in battle graves!
A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life, a life like the scriptures, figurative.
As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear, without the knowledge of good and evil?
And if by prayer Incessant I could hope to change the will Of Him who all things can, I would not cease To weary Him with my assiduous cries.
To overcome in battle, and subdue Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite Man-slaughter, shall be held the highest pitch Of human glory.
Thy actions to thy words accord; thy words To thy large heart give utterance due; thy heart; Contains of good, wise, just, the perfect shape.
Sweetest Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen Within thy airy shell, By slow Meander's margent green, And in the violet-embroidered vale.
Servant of God, well done! well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintain'd Against revolted multitudes the cause of truth.
I had always thought that the idea of love at first sight was one of those things invented by lady novelists from the South with three names.
Robert Frost's triumph was not being at John Kennedy's inauguration ceremony, but the day when he put the last period on "West-Running Brook.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their families, their histories too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems.
People who talk a lot about their victimization make me uncomfortable. It's as if they use their suffering as weapons or badges of some kind.
In the world of language, or in other words in the world of art and liberal education, religion necessarily appears as mythology or as Bible.
When your tongue can taste shadows and your friends are shedding tears, That's when you know that hell is empty 'cos all the devils are here.
The satisfactions/of agreement are/immediate as sugar--/a melting of the/granular, a syrup/that lingers, shared/not singular./Many prefer it.
Language is material to shape and mold, not only a transparent or invisible medium for communication, business contracts, or telling stories.
Life is but a sleep disturbed by dreaming, prompted by the will; the saddened soul with sadness hides it's secrets, and the gay, with thrill.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.
Peace We passed their graves: The dead men there, Winners or losers, Did not care. In the dark They could not see Who had gained The victory.
Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.
The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.
I'm interested in finding new and more humane modes of safety, and in exposing the arbitrary and superficial protections that have failed us.
We live on the circumference of a hollow circle. We draw the circumference, like spiders, out of ourselves: it is all criticism of criticism.
The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.
Come, drink the mystic wine of Night, Brimming with silence and the stars; While earth, bathed in this holy light, Is seen without its scars.
It is almost impossible for the poetess, once laurelled, to take off the crown for good or to reject values and taste of those who tender it.
I pretended indifference…even in the presence of love, in the presence of hunger. And the more deeply I felt, the less able I was to respond.
All nature, then, as self-sustained, consists Of twain of things: of bodies and of void In which they're set, and where they're moved around.
When April steps aside for May, Like diamonds all the rain-drops glisten; Fresh violets open every day: To some new bird each hour we listen.
Perhaps his tragedy is that he is the one normal writer left on earth and it is this that adds to his isolation and so to his sense of guilt.
Ordinary, said Aunt Lydia, is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.
If you disagree with your government, that's political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you're evil.
It isn't the thing you do, dear, it's the thing you leave undone which gives you a bit of heartache at the setting at the setting of the sun.
Some of the poetic writers who insert passages of realism in their texts have no underlying philosophy to uphold them, and revert to realism.
A symbol from the first, of mastery, experiments such as Hippocrates made and substituted for vague speculation stayed the ravages of plague.
Even sad stories are company. And perhaps that's why you might read such a chronicle, to look into a companionable darkness that isn't yours.
There is no getting around the fundamental fact that we need to interact with everything in order to manifest the wholeness we are born with.
The African lions rush to attack bulls; they do not attack butterflies. [Lat., In tauros Libyci ruunt leones; Non sunt papilionibus molesti.]
You are reduced / To the after-sorrow / That will last my lifetime. The hair-tearing / Grief of the mother / Whose child has been swept away.
I do fear death. But what I actually fear is not dying. I mean, true, it will be sad. But I know that there is a better place waiting for me.
You can get there from here, though there's no going home. Everywhere you go will be somewhere you've never been. "Theories of Time and Space