Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Even in the centuries which appear to us to be the most monstrous and foolish, the immortal appetite for beauty has always found satisfaction.
I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors, and the most patient of teachers.
My focus is on the rhythmic relationship between body and ground and the visual relationships among the elements of the always-changing scene.
For several centuries what has passed for song in literary circles was any text that looked like the lyrics for a commonplace melodic setting.
Metaphorically these essays move as a quiet but observant coast-guard cutter among the rocks and islands up and down the littoral of our life.
What you can plan is too small for you to live. What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.
When death finally comes you will welcome it like an old friend, being aware of how dreamlike and impermanent the pheneomenal world really is.
We're all writing out of a wound, and that's where our song comes from. The wound is singing. We're singing back to those who've been wounded.
[On being shown an apartment by a real estate agent:] Oh, dear, that's much too big. All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.
Gather therefore the Rose, whilst yet is prime, For soon comes age, that will her pride deflower: Gather the Rose of love, whilst yet is time.
I guess that would have been 1968. I was a freshman in college and I wasn't writing good poems, but I was at least trying to write poems then.
The attention deficit disorder of the culture is very distressing in America now and I think it puts a lot of things at risk, not just poetry.
Earth bears no balsams for mistakes; Men crown the knave, and scourge the tool That did his will: but thou, O Lord, Be merciful to me, a fool.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep, Curled blindly in impenetrable sorrow, And then the thought confounds us with its strangeness.
Even the art of quoting is a conservative art most of the time, in order to propel the same ideas and the same self-congratulatory importance.
Bruce Lee, before he fought, he would try to visualize how the fight would go, because he was visualizing a victorious path out of the combat.
Youth, enthusiasm, and tenderness are like the days of spring. Instead of complaining, O my heart, of their brief duration, try to enjoy them.
It is criminal to steal a purse, daring to steal a fortune, a mark of greatness to steal a crown. The blame diminishes as the guilt increases.
I battered the cordons around me And cradled my wings on the breeze, Then soared to the uttermost reaches With rapture, with power, with ease!
Of men eternally dear! happy indeed If you have breathing-space From pain: blessed all the more If death should heal you of the pain you fear!
Sometimes my poetry is an attempt to keep off existential terror; sometimes it is a grappling with philosophical problems; sometimes just fun.
I felt that I had to write. Even if I had never been published, I knew that I would go on writing, enjoying it and experiencing the challenge.
Take care, you who wish / to deal with names / for love. Behind their sweetness / and wrath, nothing endures. / Nothing but wounds and kisses.
Remember for just one minute of the day, it would be best to try looking upon yourself more as God does, for She knows your true royal nature.
Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter.
Ich glaube sogar, durch Leidensk a« mpfe k o« nnten dieTiere zu Menschen werden. I believe that by suffering even animals could be made human.
On the king's gate the moss grew gray; The king came not. They call'd him dead; And made his eldest son, one day, Slave in his father's stead.
All governments, Books, customs, buildings, railways, ships, and all the stark realities that men have made, Are but imagination's utterances.
Build me straight. O worthy Master! Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!
I am never indifferent, and never pretend to be, to what people say or think of my books. They are my children, and I like to have them liked.
Love must neither beg nor demand. Love must be strong enough to find certainty within itself. It then cease to be moved and becomes the mover.
Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.
Painting is marvelous; it makes you happier and more patient. Afterwards you do not have black fingers as with writing, but blue and red ones.
Bring a wife home to your house when you are of the right age, not far short of 30 years, nor much above; this is the right time for marriage.
Alas, day, you brought light, You trailed splendour You showed us god: I salute you, most precious one, But I go to a new place, Another life.
We rarely find anyone who can say he has lived a happy life, and who, content with his life, can retire from the world like a satisfied guest.
Blind self-love, vanity, lifting aloft her empty head, and indiscretion, prodigal of secrets more transparent than glass, follow close behind.
Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.
A shepherd may be a very able, trusty, and good shepherd, without a sweetheart-better, perhaps, than with one. But what is he without his dog?
But loss is a precious stone to me, a nectar Distilled in time, preaching the truth of winter To the fallen heart that does not cease to fall.
We look at death through the cheap-glazed windows of the flesh, and believe him the monster which the flawed and cracked glass represents him.
O thou, whose days are yet all spring, Faith, blighted once, is past retrieving; Experience is a dumb, dead thing; The victory's in believing.
I am glad to think I am not bound to make the world go right, but only to discover and to do, with cheerful heart, the work that God appoints.
The larvae! The scent of young blood entices and draws them closer. There's no need to venture into antiquity to evoke the shades of the dead.
My heart went out, seeking the God of my people. In thousands of homes those white candles burned tonight. I joined an invisible congregation.
I think translation is an impossible job, and I admire the people who do it in a way that brings poetry to us that we wouldn't have access to.
Who could believe an ant in theory? A giraffe in blueprint? Ten thousand doctors of what's possible Could reason half the jungle out of being.
I ne'er was struck before that hour with love so sudden and so sweet. Her face it bloomed like a sweet flower and stole my heart away complete
The difference between the reason of man and the instinct of the beast is this, that the beast does but know, but the man knows that he knows.