Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I saw that all beings are fated to happiness: action is not life, but a way of wasting some force, an enervation. Morality is the weakness of the brain.
One forgets too easily the difference between a man and his image, and that there is none between the sound of his voice on the screen and in real life.
I could feel the day offering itself to me, and I wanted nothing more than to be in the moment-but which moment? Not that one, or that one, or that one.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
I can run the gamut with beats that no one else would think of. I'm not a trained musician, so I focus on what feels right before I dispatch to writing.
Either I'm really into the organizing, or I'm really into the music. As I've been going, I've been able to figure out ways to even it out a little more.
I admire the poetic relationship to place as enacted in Wallace Stevens' poems; his poetics strikes me as an argument against the restraints of realism.
It were a blessed sight to see That child become a willow tree, His brother trees among. He'd be four times as tall as me, And live three times as long.
The man of action is not the headstrong fool who rushes into danger with no thought for himself, but the man who puts into practice the things he knows.
Anchorites used to ill-treat themselves in the way they did, so that the common people would not begrudge them the beatitude they would enjoy in heaven.
I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul.
If I never see you again I will always carry you inside outside on my fingertips and at brain edges and in centers centers of what I am of what remains.
Love is all right for those who can handle the psychic overload. It's like trying to carry a full garbage can on your back over a rushing river of piss.
Truth . . . and if mine eyes Can bear its blaze, and trace its symmetries, Measure its distance, and its advent wait, I am no prophet - I but calculate.
To forgive and to be forgiven are the two points of holy magnificence and holy modesty; round these two centres the whole doctrine of largesse revolves.
A lot of my work is process-oriented. I delve into my work and sit alone in silence and work with the material and process it, like talking to yourself.
To me it seems our duty towards the Bible is to obey its teaching in faith. I do not think we are bound to understand or account for all its utterances.
I think music, like writing, can be a mirror. Can turn back onto the listener, the viewer, the reader, an experience that they know but they don't know.
Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings And some are treasured for their markings - They cause the eyes to melt Or the body to shriek without pain.
... Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. (There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.)
It may be that a more subtle person would find for this thing a reason of greater subtlety: but such is the reason that I find, and that liketh me best.
The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.
The best song lyrics seem to me so artful, so brilliant, so warm and humorous, with both passion and wit, that my admiration is matched only by my envy.
My poems are almost all written as Diane. I don't have any problems with that, and if other women choose to identify with this, I think that's terrific.
Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, 'You're all a lost generation.' That got around to certain people and we all said, 'Whee! We're lost.
And as pale sickness does invade, Your frailer part, the breaches made, In that fair lodging still more clear, Make the bright guest, your soul, appear.
Now, that can be a traditional form or it can be something you're inventing. It can be the development of a metaphor, the working through of a metaphor.
The best men are not those who have waited for chances but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor.
Skepticism has never founded empires, established principals, or changed the world's heart. The great doers in history have always been people of faith.
No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity.
See him, the gentle Bible beast, / With lacquered hoofs and curling mane, / His wondering journey from the East / Half done, between the rock and plain.
There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.
My love came back to me Under the November tree Shelterless and dim. He put his hand upon my shoulder, He did not think me strange or older, Nor I, him.
Real friends are our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow. It were almost to be wished that all true and faithful friends should expire on the same day.
So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sin, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.
Ever building, building to the clouds, still building higher, and never reflecting that the poor narrow basis cannot sustain the giddy tottering column.
The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil Crushed.
I would like to spend more time with Spanish poetry. I know French better than Spanish, but Spanish was my first language, and my father spoke it to us.
In merest prudence men should teach . . . That science ranks as monstrous things Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings-- E'en Angel's wings!--are fictions.
The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves.
I knew the poor, I knew the hideous death they die, when famine lays its bleak hand on the door; I knew the rich, sated with merriment, who yet are sad.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come.
I tried to stir the imagination and enthusiasms of students to take risks, to do what they were most afraid of doing, to widen their horizons of action.
My earliest poems sing of the absolute necessity of allowing love to invade and pervade one's life. That can make the miracle happen in reality. Try it.
The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting.
In my opinion, it is easier to avoid iambic rhythms, when writing in syllabics, if you create a line or pattern of lines using odd numbers of syllables.
Knowing some Greek helped defuse forbidding words - not that I counted much on using them. You'll find only trace elements of this language in the poem.
What we want from art is whatever is missing from the lives we are already living and making. Something is always missing, and so art-making is endless.
Our condition never satisfies us; the present is always the worst. Though Jupiter should grant his request to each, we should continue to importune him.
Neither blows from pitchfork, nor from the lash, can make him change his ways. [Fr., Coups de fourches ni d'etriveres, Ne lui font changer de manieres.]