Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I rarely let the word NO escape from my mouth, because it is so plain to my soul that God has shouted, Yes! Yes! Yes! To every luminous movement in existence.
Go your way. Forget Prometheus, And all the woe that he is doom'd to bear; By his own choice this vile estate preferring To ignorant bliss and unfelt slavery.
I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.
Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay.
Love contending with friendship, and self with each generous impulse. To and fro in his breast his thoughts were heaving and dashing, As in a foundering ship.
Sweet is the air with the budding haws, and the valley stretching for miles below Is white with blossoming cherry-trees, as if just covered with lighted snow.
War wreaked on you his hideous ravishment; We, we alone, Nereids inviolate, Remain to weep, with the sea-birds to chant: Corinth is lost, Corinth is desolate.
Stronger than thunder's winged force All-powerful gold can speed its course; Through watchful guards its passage make, And loves through solid walls to break.
The brave are born from the brave and good. In steers and in horses is to be found the excellence of their sire; nor do savage eagles produce a peaceful dove.
Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On war's red techstone rang true metal; Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle?
There is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is groveling and sensual
If I were asked what book is better than a cheap book, I should answer that there is one book better than a cheap book, - and that is a book honestly come by.
Zen taught me how to pay attention, how to delve, how to question and enter, how to stay with -- or at least want to try to stay with -- whatever is going on.
There's just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away.
Experience unveils too late the snares laid for youth; it is the white frost which discovers the spider's web when the flies are no longer there to be caught.
Men of all ages have the same inclinations, over which reason exercises no control. Thus, wherever men are found, there are follies, ay, and the same follies.
What a wonderful thing it is to have a good friend. He identifies your innermost desires, and spares you the embarrassment of disclosing them to him yourself.
The more unharmonious and inconsistent your objects of desire, the more inconsequent, inconstant, unquiet, the more ignoble, idiotical, and criminal yourself.
I strongly wish for what I faintly hope; like the daydreams of melancholy men, I think and think in things impossible, yet love to wander in that golden maze.
And nobler is a limited command, Given by the love of all your native land, Than a successive title, long and dark, Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's Ark.
My grandmother used to say before you moan about the muck on someone else's glasses make sure you're not on about the muck on your own her glasses were filthy
O fret not after knowledge - I have none, and yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge - I have none, and yet the Evening listens.
If all ideas have to be bought, then you have an intellectually regressive system that will assure you have a highly knowledgeable elite and an ignorant mass.
You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.
The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of conscience, of thinking, of comprehending the universe.
This assumption that the blue collar crowd is not supposed to read it, or a farmer in his overalls is not to read poetry, seems to be dangerous if not tragic.
Reduced... to a crude formula, the Russian tragedy is precisely the tragedy of a society in which literature turned out to be the prerogative of the minority.
The thundering line of battle stands, And in the air Death moans and sings: But Day shall clasp him with strong hands, And Night shall fold him in soft wings.
In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.
Abortion opponents say women seek abortions in haste and confusion. Pro-choicers reply: Abortion is the most difficult, agonizing decision a woman ever makes.
In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made
I was excited by what my painter friends were doing, and they seemed to be interested in our poetry too, and that was a wonderful little, fizzy sort of world.
A word I want to see written on my grave: I am alive like you, and I am standing beside you. Close your eyes and look around, you will see me in front of you.
But now I have learned to listen to silence. To hear its choirs singing the song of ages, chanting the hymns of space, and disclosing the secrets of eternity.
Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.
it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.
If the matter of death is reduced to sleep and rest, what can there be so bitter in it, that any one should pine in eternal grief for the decease of a friend?
in the context of loss, each child is an only to her or his parents. Human relationships do not fill in for, do not substitute for, do not replace each other.
I hate to tell you this, but you will never actually go to a galaxy far, far away and encounter Darth Vader. That's science fiction; it isn't going to happen.
It is my contention that the process of reading is part of the process of writing, the necessary completion without which writing can hardly be said to exist.
When we think we have something to say we are usually wrong. We are fooling ourselves. Trip into discovery. Don't write what you know, discover something new.
One ambition of poetry, certainly, is to create a reverberant silence in its wake, one that means more or differently than the silence that preceded the poem.
Each of us carries some wisdom waiting to be discovered at the center of our experience. Everything we meet, if faced and held, reveals a part of that wisdom.
We can never be prepared for everything. No one person can anticipate all of life. In fact, overpreparation is yet another way to wall ourselves in from life.
And Robert Lowell, of course - in his poems, we're not located in his actual life. We're located more in the externals, in the journalistic facts of his life.
Almost anything is too much. I am trying in my poems to have the reader be the experiencer. I do not want to be there. It is not even a walk we take together.
Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
I could be really sad and I start to cry; I feel alive then. I could be at a concert and I throw my hands up in the air and I feel elation; I feel alive then.
There's Psalms that tell you things that nobody tells you - that you're fearfully and wonderfully made, that you're beautiful, that you have worth, basically.
you will never catch up. Walk around feeling like a leaf know you could tumble at any second. Then decide what to do with your time. --The Art of Disappearing