Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
my mother hoped that i would die etcetera bravely of course my father used to become hoarse talking about how it was a privilege and if only he could
There is the silence of age, too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it in words intelligible to those who have not lived the great range of life.
Do not confuse fantasy with imagination; the former consumes itself in daydreaming, the latter stimulates creativity in the arts and in the sciences.
What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it's no novelty, and if only to us, then it won't be understood.
When I was twelve, I started reading Eudora Welty, Thomas Wolfe, Flannery O'Connor, James Agee, and - do we dare breathe the name - William Faulkner.
Let us endeavor to commence every enterprise with a pure view to the glory of God, continue it without distraction, and finish it without impatience.
There is work that is work and there is play that is play; there is play that is work and work that is play. And in only one of these lies happiness.
He that cannot forgive others, breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass if he would ever reach heaven; for everyone has need to be forgiven.
If we can possibly avoid wrecking this little planet of ours, we will, But-there must be risks! There must be. In experimental work there always are!
You can have a poem like "B-Movie" and sum up thirty conversations that people have had on the subject, but I wrote it down, and other people didn't.
We don't ask a flower any special reason for its existence. We just look at it and are able to accept it as being something different from ourselves.
But it is never over; nothing ends until we want it to. Look, in shattered midnights, On black ice under silver trees, We are still dancing, dancing.
Although it's not useful to drown in despair, it's also not useful to keep a 'positive attitude' when this means concealing or denying real emotions.
the body, seeking truth, sends a signal. But decoding it, interpreting its meaning, and knowing how to proceed from there is another matter entirely.
He who fights with priests may make up his mind to have his poor good name torn and befouled by the most infamous lies and the most cutting slanders.
Wounded vanity knows when it is mortally hurt; and limps off the field, piteous, all disguises thrown away. But pride carries its banner to the last.
If time is not real, then the dividing line between this world and eternity, between suffering and bliss, between good and evil, is also an illusion.
Any attempt to replace a personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.
Joyful let the soul be in the present, let it disdain to trouble about what is beyond and temper bitterness with a laugh. Nothing is blessed forever.
The short span of life forbids us to spin out hope to any length. Soon will night be upon you, and the fabled Shades, and the shadowy Plutonian home.
Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything! We know that, and we both claim and allow to others in their turn this indulgence.
I've thought of the last line of some poems for years and tried them out, It wouldn't work because the last line was much too beautiful for the poem.
Although I try / to hold the single thought / of Buddha's teaching in my heart, / I cannot help but hear / the many crickets' voices calling as well.
The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience.
Reputation is only a candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
The question of common sense is always: 'what is it good for?' - a question which would abolish the rose and be answered triumphantly by the cabbage.
God is the only being who has time enough; but a prudent man, who knows how to seize occasion, can commonly make a shift to find as much as he needs.
My look was based on the Madison Avenue guy who's just lost his job. Ivy League suit a bit scuzzed up, an outgrown layer cut and five o'clock shadow.
In the first minute that my soul is infused, the Image of God is imprinted in my soul; so forward is God in my behalf, and so early does he visit me.
Woman's mind Oft' shifts her passions, like th'inconstant wind; Sudden she rages, like the troubled main, Now sinks the storm, and all is calm again.
Who hath not heard the rich complain Of surfeits, and corporeal pain? He barr'd from every use of wealth, Envies the ploughman's strength and health.
I came to feel how far above All fancy, pride, and fickle maidenhood, All earthly pleasure, all imagined good, Was the warm tremble of a devout kiss.
When complaints are freely heard, deeply considered and speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil liberty attained that wise men look for.
The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day. Be famous then By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o'er all the world.
Fairy elves, Whose midnight revels by a forest side Or fountain some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress.
Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets.
Whether by theft or by artistry or by conquest, when it comes to time, Venetians are the world's greatest experts. They bested time like no one else.
Someone accompanies every soul from the other side when it enters this place. Usually it is an ancestor with whom that child shares traits and gifts.
Marks of Identity is, among other things, the expression of the process of alienation in a contemporary intellectual with respect to his own country.
We are hungry for more; if we do not consciously pursue the More, we create less for ourselves and make it more difficult to experience More in life.
Never does nature say one thing and Wisdom another. Variant: Wisdom and Nature! are they not the same? Variant: Nature and Wisdon always speak alike.
I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. You wander restlessly from forest to forest while the Reality is within your own dwelling.
It's Twitter's combination of simplicity and complexity that is astonishing in the same way that minimalist sculpture was inspiring and enlightening.
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
You may chain my hands, you may shackle my feet; you may even throw me into a dark prison; but you shall not enslave my thinking, because it is free!
There are those who give little of the much which they have - and they give it for recognition and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.
Poetry has its own laws speaking for the life of the planet. It is a language that wants to bring back together what the other words have torn apart.
I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy!
Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.