Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
He has the obligation to society that any human being has. I don't think a satirist has any greater obligation to society than a bricklayer or anybody else.
it's way too early for him to be talking anyhow but I see in his eyes something and I see in his eyes a voice and I see in his eyes a whole new set of words
Here's one more from my limited experience with all 3 fields: A writer creates life; a poet creates magic from life; a philosopher tries to understand life.
I always notice the dysfunctional dynamic of human relationships because most places where you encounter it, people are trying to pretend it isnt happening.
Sometimes I feel like I'm not solid. I'm hollow. There's nothing behind my eyes. I'm a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence.
I feel self-repressed again. The old fall disease. Where is my willpower? The idea of a life gets in the way of my life...I dream too much, work too little.
It is not my wish to lounge about the college and fatten on a fellowship all my days. I am always trying to look upon a college life as a medium not an end.
Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one The great grey rigid uniform combined Safety with virtue of the sun. Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.
Sweet is the breath of vernal shower,/ The bee's collected treasure sweet,/ Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet/ The still small voice of gratitude.
Happy the person who has learned the cause of things and has put under his or her feet all fear, inexorable fate, and the noisy strife of the hell of greed.
But once in a while the odd thing happens Once in a while the dream comes true And the whole pattern of life is altered Once in a while, the moon turns blue
My own wandering blood comes from my seafaring grandfather, who, after he had left the sea and settled on shore, still governed his house by a ship's rules.
One ought not to hoard culture. It should be adapted and infused into society as a leaven. Liberality of culture does not mean illiberality of its benefits.
Under the specious pretext of effecting 'the happiness of the whole community,' nearly all the wrongs and intrusions of government has been carried through.
Re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Praise Him, each savage furious beast That on His stores do daily feast; And you tame slaves, of the laborious plough, Your weary knees to your Creator bow.
I have a need of silence and of stars. Too much is said too loudly. I am dazed. The silken sound of whirled infinity Is lost in voices shouting to be heard.
Supreme art is a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius, but never abandoned.
Come let us mock at the great That had such burdens on the mind And toiled so hard and late To leave some monument behind, Nor thought of the leveling wind.
Poetry and music I have banished, But the stupidity Of root, shoot, blossom or clay Makes no demand. I bend my body to the spade Or grope with a dirty hand.
Instead of weeping when a tragedy occurs in a songbird's life, it sings away its grief. I believe we could well follow the pattern of our feathered friends.
Time travels at different speeds for different people. I can tell you who time strolls for, who it trots for, who it gallops for, and who it stops cold for.
Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail, And say there is no sin but to be rich; And being rich, my virtue then shall be To say there is no vice but beggary
Demetrius: Villain, what hast thou done? Aaron: That which thou canst not undo. Chiron: Thou hast undone our mother. Aaron: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Fie, fie upon her! There's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, Nay, her foot speaks; her wanton spirits look out At every joint and motive of her body.
For 'tis the sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own petar; and't shall go hard But I will delve one yard below their mines And blow them at the moon.
Under the colour of commending him I have access my own love to prefer; But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy, To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.
. . . it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself it is needful that you frame the season of your own harvest.
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.
Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and the daily grind.
Every intelligent person, whether hes an artist or not - a mathematician, a doctor, a scientist - possesses a poetic way of seeing and describing the world.
Whether you are a genius or an idiot, a thief or, like me, a Zen priest who has cultivated the mind for 30 years - the mind anyway is subject to conditions.
For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown
Once a poet calls his myth a myth, he prevents the reader from treating it as a reality; we use the word "myth" only for stories we ourselves cannot believe.
Now my soul is incarnate in my country, My body has swallowed her soul, And I and my country are one. My name is million, for I love and suffer for millions.
If we experienced life through the eyes of a child, everything would be magical and extraordinary. Let our curiosity, adventure and wonder of life never end.
You're looking for something, I don't know what I'm looking for, but I'm looking. Writing is a lot about that. When you write a poem. When you write a novel.
Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.
I can't quite see the point of poems like "Wittgenstein Goes for a Walk with A Hawk in Sherwood Forest." I know they're trying to be clever, but they're not.
You can find me on the moon waxing and waning. My heart full of petals, every single one begging 'Love me, love me, love me. Whoever I am. Whoever I become.'
Let whoever wants to, relax in the south, And bask in the garden of paradise. Here is the essence of northand it's autumn I've chosen as this year's friend.
Wickedness comes to its height by degrees. He that dares say of a less sin, Is it not a little one? will ere long say of a greater, Tush, God regards it not!
Bless all useful objects, the spoons made of bone, the mattress I cook my dreams upon, the typewriter that is my church with an altar of keys always waiting.
I dreamt -- marvellous error! -- that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures.
That peculiar disease of intellectuals, that infatuation with ideas at the expense of experience, that compels experience to conform to bookish expectations.
I wasn't aware I'd write the novel when I wrote the New Yorker story either. And the narration of their construction in 10:04 is fiction, however flickering.
There is a passion for perfection which you will rarely see fully developed; but you may note this fact, that in successful lives it is never wholly lacking.
When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible.... To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves.
If you tell a story that's only allegory, then it doesn't help you at all. If it doesn't bring some emotional charge, then it's just talking about something.
You make art, you make it from what you know, and that's the best way to make art. You get lost in the details and make something that feels like it's yours.