Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The world is not a courtroom There is no judge no jury no plaintiff. This is a caravan filled with eccentric beings telling wondrous stories about God.
A little and a little, collected together, becomes a great deal; the heap in the barn consists of single grains, and drop and drop make the inundation.
Come, come thou bleak December wind, And blow the dry leaves from the tree! Flash, like a Love-thought, thro'me, Death And take a Life that wearies me.
Part of my gradual education of myself has been to think that there is a deep relationship between the nature of the creature and the worth of the art.
She had blue skin, And so did he. He kept it hid And so did she. They searched for blue Their whole life through, Then passed right by- And never knew.
I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.
Quoting son, Noah Levine: Once you see what the heart really needs, it doesn’t matter if you’re going to live or die, the work is always the same. (25)
When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes, I was your son, high on your horse, My mind a top whipped by the lashes Of your rhetoric, windy of course.
I can't think logically about who I am or where I am going. I have been very ecstatic, horribly depressed, shocked, elated, enlightened, and enervated.
I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.
You could become internationally famous - you're Gemini, and according to antique authority have a literary talent, which of course your letters prove.
Adopt the character of the twisting octopus, which takes on the appearance of the nearby rock . Now follow in this direction, now turn a different hue.
Boy, you're like a horse. Just now sated with seed, You've come back to my stable, Yearning for a good rider, fine meadow, An icy spring, shady groves.
I deliberately wrote a poem in my last book where I was suggesting that there are other passions as great as or more important than the passion of sex.
All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do sowould I?
Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.
I went to a grim Victorian school with classes of 40 or 50 children. It was a very rigid and unimaginative education, but it did teach us the three Rs.
God will bless you,' said he, 'you are an angel since you take care of the flowers.' 'No,' she replied. 'I am the devil, but that's all the same to me.
The poet's function is to make his imagination . . . become the light in the mind of others. His role, in short, is to help people to live their lives.
Of what is real I say, Is it the old, the roseate parent or The bride come jingling, kissed and cupped, or else The spirit and all ensigns of the self?
After the leaves have fallen, we return To a plain sense of things. It is as if We had come to an end of the imagination, Inanimate in an inert savoir.
There is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius.
The shallow, as intimated, consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise see in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.
A woman waits for me, she contains all, nothing is lacking, Yet all were lacking if sex were lacking, or if the moisture of the right man were lacking.
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight expands my blood? Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
To some people a tree is something so incredibly beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes. To others it is just a green thing that stands in the way.
O but we dreamed to mend Whatever mischief seemed To afflict mankind, but now That winds of winter blow Learn that we were crack-pated when we dreamed.
A speckled cat and a tame hare Eat at my hearthstone And sleep there; And both look up to me alone For learning and defence As I look up to Providence.
even The bed of love, that in the imagination Had seemed to be the giver of all peace, Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting, And as soon finished.
I, too, await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
There is no glory in star or blossom till looked upon by a loving eye; There is no fragrance in April breezes till breathed with joy as they wander by.
As we had no part of our will on our entrance into this life, we should not presume to any on our leaving it, but soberly learn to will which He wills.
The sense of death is most in apprehension, And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great As when a giant dies.
A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain; But that's all one, our play is done, And we'll strive to please you every day.
Critics must excuse me if I compare them to certain animals called asses, who, by gnawing vines, originally taught the great advantage of pruning them.
It took me 14 years to write poems about Vietnam. I had never thought about writing about it, and in a way I had been systematically writing around it.
Responsibility to yourself means that you don't fall for shallow and easy solutions-it means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short.
I mean to say, this is the book and I really loathe it and I can't imagine what a nice Jewish boy like me ever, how I ever got into this dreadful trade.
And it occurs to me that if I were aboard a rowboat floating in the middle of all the beer I've drunk in a lifetime, I'd never be able to see the shore.
There should be, methinks, as little merit in loving a woman for her beauty as in loving a man for his prosperity; both being equally subject to change.
The smell of violets, hidden in the green, Pour'd back into my empty soul and frame The times when I remembered to have been Joyful and free from blame.
When fate has allowed to any man more than one great gift, accident or necessity seems usually to contrive that one shall encumber and impede the other.
There lived a singer in France of old By the tideless dolorous midland sea. In a land of sand and rain and gold There shone one woman, and none but she.
I much preferred Latin to Greek. I loved the language being such a pattern that you could not shift a word without the whole sentence falling to pieces.
The actual materials are important. A book at the nightstand is important - a light you can get at - or a flashlight as Kerouac had a brakeman's latern.
You see those guys wearing baggy pants, descendants of the parachute pants, wearing an odd, weird Frankenstein haircut. It all comes out of Peter Lorre.
I'm never gonna wait that extra twenty minutes to text you back and I'm never gonna play hard to get when I know your life has been hard enough already.
Each sudden gust of light explains itself as flames, but neither they, nor even bombs redoubled on the hills tonight can quite include me in their fear.
I will be steel! I will build a steel bridge over my need! I will build a bomb shelter over my heart! But my future is a secret. It is as shy as a mole.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.