Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Sta come torre ferma, che non crolla Giammai la cima per soffiar de' venti. Be steadfast as a tower that doth not bend its stately summit to the tempest's shock.
Open your mind to what I shall disclose, and hold it fast within you; he who hears, but does not hold what he has heard, learns nothing. Beatrice - Canto V 40-42
The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.
It's when we face for a moment the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know the taint in our own selves, that awe cracks the mind's shell and enters the heart.
For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history.
We look and see what we see in a mirror, and we believe it. That's important, the question of belief. The question is: Should we believe what we see in a mirror?
A wonderful bird is a pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week; But I'm damned if I see how the helican.
To desire to write poems that endure-we undertake such a goal certain of two things: that in all likelihood we will fail, and if we succeed we will never know it
I love people and psychology. As a writer, I’m not so interested in Fred getting from the living room to the car. I want to go inside Fred’s soul and play there.
Love is a place & through this place of love move (with brightness of peace) all places yes is a world & in this world of yes live (skillfully curled) all worlds
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.
Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
I always think of childhood as the inarticulate moment, and you have your little camera. You were filming it, recording it, you just didn't know how to speak it.
Happiness, for you we walk on a knife edge. To the eyes you are a flickering light, to the feet, thin ice that cracks; and so may no one touch you who loves you.
In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.
Anyone who is too lazy to master the comparatively small glossary necessary to understand Chaucer deserves to be shut out from the reading of good books forever.
Science is unpoetic only to minds jaundiced with sentiment and romanticism . . . the great masters of the past boasted all they could of it and found it magical.
To kill our dream life would be to kill ourselves, to mutilate our soul. Dreaming is the one thing we have that's really ours, invulnerably and inalterably ours.
The supreme empire is that of the Emperor who renounces all normal life, that of other men, and in who the care of supremacy doesn't weigh like a load of jewels.
I do not think the mere extension of the ballot a panacea for all the ills of our national life. What we need to-day is not simplymore voters, but better voters.
Many a maid have I won by a quarrel, when flattery was in no wise helpful; but take heed that thou art in the wrong, so that thou mayest acknowledge thine error.
For out of old fields, as men saith, Cometh all this new corn from year to year; And out of old books, in good faith, Cometh all this new science that men learn.
There are many thousands of books on particular assassinations and on the subject in general, but nearly all of them deal with the victims, not the perpetrators.
The world I feel, within the realm of art, is more genuine than the wrorld of matter. Artistic feeling is not tape measures, spectrographs, or flash camera lens.
A poem is not an expression, nor is it an object. Yet it somewhat partakes of both. What a poem is is never to be known, for which I have learned to be grateful.
Children will not pretend to be enjoying books, and they will not read books because they have been told that these books are good. They are looking for delight.
The Surrealist supernatural is a bit predictable but given the choice between supernatural and anything else, I would have no hesitation. Long live supernatural!
All nature ... is a respiration Of the Spirit of God, who, in breathing hereafter Will inhale it into his bosom again, So that nothing but God alone will remain.
How can I tell the signals and the signs By which one heart another heart divines? How can I tell the many thousand ways By which it keeps the secret it betrays?
The great modern heresy in poetry is to confuse the use we make of words in a poem with modalities of speech...For true poetry is never speech but always a song.
You will become tired, Siddhartha." "I will become tired." "You will fall asleep, Siddhartha." "I will not fall asleep." "You will die, Siddhartha." "I will die.
Pale death, with impartial step, knocks at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings. [Lat., Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regumque turres.]
Justice, though moving with tardy pace, has seldom failed to overtake the wicked in their flight. [Lat., Raro antecedentem scelestum Deseruit pede poena claudo.]
Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell.
No one says a novel has to be one thing. It can be anything it wants to be, a vaudeville show, the six o’clock news, the mumblings of wild men saddled by demons.
We do very little re-writing in the office. We often take on people who show great promise and who we hope will develop into somebody important and someone good.
How I do love the earth. I feel it thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were conscious of my love, as if something passed into my dancing blood from it.
I love to reread, even more than I like to read, so keeping a hold of books that I adore is very important, although they flee from me - they are always fleeing.
There is a sight all hearts beguiling-- A youthful mother to her infant smiling, Who with spread arms and dancing feet, A cooing voice, returns its answer sweet.
Man without religion is a diseased creature, who would persuade himself he is well and needs not a physician; but woman without religion is raging and monstrous.
I need to concede a considerable area to what I don't know and can't know, and perhaps don't wish to know. Only to understand in a way I do not quite understand.
To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon in death.
That space the Evil One abstracted stood From his own evil, and for the time remained Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed, Of guile, of hate, of envy, of revenge .
I have always felt that no matter how inscrutable its ways and means, the universe is working perfectly and working according to a greater plan than we can know.
With poets, the choice of words is invariably more telling than the story line; that's why the best of them dread the thought of their biographies being written.
The Internet is a graveyard, a bright malfunctioning littoral, and it is entirely necropastoral. But the necropastoral can't be sustained - it's non-sustainable.
How something important happens is the business of historians and newspapers, the effect it has is the business of philosophers and writers and especially poets.
Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.
A voice cannot carry the tongue and the lips that gave it wings. Alone must it seek the ether. And alone and without his nest shall the eagle fly across the sun.