Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I was teaching, I gave a lot of my mind and anxiety to it. There was always something clenched and anxious in me until the classes were over.
Everyone is so different. I sometimes wish I wrote in a different way. You know, that feeling of: So-and-so writes slowly, if only I wrote slowly.
In all the poems I've written I've not really engaged in politics, and when I've found myself moving in that direction I've always stopped myself.
The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don't wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait. I think it's the greatest art.
When we turn to our innate wisdom for the harmony of mind and gut, we heal the entrance to the heart as it seeks to beat in rhythm with the world.
Coleridge received the Person from Porlock And ever after called him a curse, Then why did he hurry to let him in? He could have hid in the house.
I don't know how long I kept at it... I felt reasonably safe, streched out on the floor, and lay quite still. It didn't seem to be summer any more
Prose is in fact the museum where the dead images of verse are preserved. In 'Notes', prose is 'a museum where all the old weapons of poetry kept.
Daily contact with boys who had not been brought up as gently as I worked an immediate and, in some respects, a beneficial change in my character.
Wit is brushwood; judgment, timber; the one gives the greatest flame, the other yields the most durable heat; and both meeting make the best fire.
I was well read and knew languages, but I didn't want to become Ezra Pound. I wanted to write poetry that people like my parents might respond to.
Nobody knows like a woman how to say things at the same time sweet and profound. Sweetness and depth, this is all of woman; this is all of Heaven.
Society is a republic. When an individual tries to lift themselves above others, they are dragged down by the mass, either by ridicule or slander.
Historically, there are hierarchies of purity. Certain aspects of poetry are very, very pure. The lyric poem can't be anything but the lyric poem.
You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
Literary confessors are contemptible, like beggars who exhibit their sores for money, but not so contemptible as the public that buys their books.
Pleasure's a Moth, that sleeps by day And dances by false glare at night; But Joy's a Butterfly, that loves To spread its wings in Nature's light.
How cold the vacancy When the phantoms are gone and the shaken realist First sees reality. The mortal no Has its emptiness and tragic expirations.
I swear I will never henceforth have to do with the faith that tells the best! I will have to do only with that faith that leaves the best untold.
This life's dim windows of the soul Distorts the heavens from pole to pole And leads you to believe a lie When you see with, not through, the eye.
How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!
A herd of prairie-wolves will enter a field of melons and quarrel about the division of the spoils as fiercely and noisily as so many politicians.
Loveliest of lovely things are they, On earth, that soonest pass away. The rose that lives its little hour Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Thine eyes are springs in whose serene And silent waters heaven is seen. Their lashes are the herbs that look On their young figures in the brook.
Poetry demands a different material than prose. It uses another facet of the same fact... the spontaneous conformation of language as it is heard.
The Moon, the dried weeds and the Pleiades - Seven feet tall the dark, dried weed stalks make a part of the night a red lace on the milky blue sky
Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
Oh to have a lodge in some vast wilderness. Where rumors of oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful wars may never reach me anymore.
O, swear not by the moon, the fickle moon, the inconstant moon, that monthly changes in her circle orb, Lest that thy love prove likewise variable
I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness, glad of other men's good, content with my harm.
The wound of peace is surety, Surety secure; but modest doubt is called The beacon of the wise, the tent that searches To th' bottom of the worst.
But love that comes too late, Like a remorseful pardon slowly carried, To the great sender turns a sour offense, Crying, 'That's good that's gone.
When heaven doth weep, doth not the earth o'erflow? If the winds rage, doth not the sea wax mad, Threatening the welkin with his big-swollen face?
I long to create something that can't be used to keep us passive: I want to write a script about plumbing, how every pipe is joined to every other.
But while I breathe Heaven's air and Heaven looks down on me, And smiles at my best meanings, I remain Mistress of mine own self and mine own soul.
The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear.
Let others seek renown in arms; For me wine's wars have greater charms: Then fill the bowl, boy; fill it high: 'Tis better drunk, than dead to lie.
If people connect me with the Romantics in general, they probably connect me most with Keats. But Wordsworth is the poet I admire above all others.
The stars of death stood over us. And Russia, guiltless, beloved, writhed under the crunch of bloodstained boots, under the wheels of Black Marias.
Not that it was beautiful, but that, in the end, there was a certain sense of order there; something worth learning in that narrow diary of my mind
Loving me with my shoes off means loving my long brown legs, sweet dears, as good as spoons; and my feet, those two children let out to play naked.
As ships becalmed at eve, that lay With canvas drooping, side by side, Two towers of sail, at dawn of day Are scarce, long leagues apart, descried.
That which exists in nature is a something purely individual and particular. Art, on the contrary, is essentially destined to manifest the general.
Unhappiness doesn't grow on the chest like leprosy. Poverty won't fall off the roof like a loose tile, no; poverty and unhappiness are man's doing.
Vade Mecum I want the scissors to be sharp and the table perfectly level when you cut me out of my life and paste me in that book you always carry.
I think 'accessible' just means that the reader can walk into the poem without difficulty. The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry.
Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.
Even though language has its richness the relationship between language and the writer is always like a stone and you have to make the stone human.
I thought of how many places there are in the world that belong in this way to someone, who has it in his blood beyond anyone else's understanding.
t was almost disappointing because it seemed when stress and madness were eliminated from my daily life there wasn't much left you could depend on.