Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive.
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light; Tot wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright; Not as she is, but as she fills his dreams.
People used to grow up in small communities where folk wisdom was passed down. But we don't live there anymore. We can't go next door to your aunt and ask her for the answers.
Shedding the carapace we have been building so assiduously on the surface, we must by definition give up exactly what we thought was necessary to protect us from further harm.
Teachers at all levels encourage the idea that you have to talk about things in order to understand them, because they wouldn't have jobs, otherwise. But it's phony, you know.
Among a hundred windows shining dully in the vast side of greater-than-palace number such-and-such one burns these several years, each night as if the room within were aflame.
Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.
... if this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would be a of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
Too many of the artists of Wales spend too much time talking about the position of theartists of Wales.There is only one position for an artist anywhere: and that is, upright.
We need a renaissance of wonder. We need to renew, in our hearts and in our souls, the deathless dream, the eternal poetry, the perennial sense that life is miracle and magic.
The Typical American? He is sent to school Little or much, where he imbibes the rule Of safety first and comfort; in his youth He joins the church and ends the quest of truth.
There's been no poet, no great poet in the history of poetry who hasn't also been a great reader of poetry. This is sometimes distressing to my students when I tell them this.
Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor; Part with it as with money, sparing; pay No moment but in purchase of its worth, And what it's worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
One has so much time for thought in the country! However occupied one may be, 'tis with nothing that engrosses the mind, which works away on its own account like a mill-wheel.
Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
Apart from a few simple principles, the sound and rhythm of English prose seem to me matters where both writers and readers should trust not so much to rules as to their ears.
If this be to have sense, if to be awake Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things, For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take And for truth commune with imaginings
Man shouldn't be able to see his own face. That's what's most terrible. Nature gave him the possibility of not seeing it, as well as the incapacity of not seeing his own eyes.
And wheresoever, in his rich creation, Sweet music breathes--in wave, or bird, or soul-- 'Tis but the faint and far reverberation Of that great tune to which the planets roll!
Mark, how the ready hands of Death prepare: His bow is bent, and he hath notch'd his dart; He aims, he levels at thy slumb'ring heart: The wound is posting, O be wise, beware.
Children are excellent observers, and will often perceive your slightest defects. In general, those who govern children, forgive nothing in them, but everything in themselves.
I don't know of any other city where you can walk through so many culturally diverse neighborhoods, and you're never out of sight of the wild hills. Nature is very close here.
Some women are to be captured by storm and some taken by siege; yet if there be not a traitor in her heart that shall deliver up the garrison, thou shalt not prevail over her.
With eye upraised his master's look to scan, The joy, the solace, and the aid of man: The rich man's guardian and the poor man's friend, The only creature faithful to the end.
Laugh not too much; the witty man laughs least: For wit is news only to ignorance. Lesse at thine own things laugh; lest in the jest Thy person share, and the conceit advance.
In thy discourse, if thou desire to please; All such is courteous, useful, new, or wittie: Usefulness comes by labour, wit byease; Courtesie grows in court; news in the citie.
Since the world never faults a man who refuses to yield...it is generally recognized that weak men live in obedience to the world's will, while the strong obey only their own.
The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.
Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a hand unseen, Scattering its bounty like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face the face of one long dead Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali's style.
Regardless of the criticisms I receive from the left, the right and the middle, I think it's important to maintain a prolific writing jab, as long as my literary legs hold up.
Loss isn't an absence after all. It is a presence. A strong presence right next to me. I look at it. It doesn't look like anything, that's what is so strange. It just fits in.
My feeling is that poetry will wither on the vine if you don't regularly come back to the simplest fundamentals of the poem: rhythm, rhyme, simple subjects - love, death, war.
O rose! the sweetest blossom, Of spring the fairest flower, O rose! the joy of heaven. The god of love, with roses His yellow locks adorning, Dances with the hours and graces.
It's all well and good to say that Germans were all responsible for the concentration camps, but I don't think they were. I think that was the work of a small group of fiends.
We cannot but think there is something like a fallacy in Mr. Buckle's theory that the advance of mankind is necessarily in the direction of science, and not in that of morals.
A mountain in labour shouted so loud that everyone, summoned by the noise, ran up expecting that she would be delivered of a city bigger than Paris; she brought forth a mouse.
There is but halting for the wearied foot; The better way is hidden. Faith hath failed; One stronger far than reason mastered her. It is not reason makes faith hard, but life.
Injustice arises either from precipitation, or indolence, or from a mixture of both. - The rapid and slow are seldom just; the unjust wait either not at all, or wait too long.
The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything Like boarders, and you don't see until It's all over how little there was to learn Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.
I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I Did, till we loved? were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the seven sleepers' den?
Trust on and think To-morrow will repay; To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest With some new Joys, cuts off what we possest.
Of all mechanics, of all servile handycrafts-men, a gamester is the vilest. But yet, as many of the quality are of the profession, he is admitted amongst the politest company.
The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, Surprised by unjust force, but not inthralled; Yea, even that which mischief meant most harm Shall in the happy trial prove most glory.
Extol not riches then, the toil of fools, The wise man's cumbrance, if not snare, more apt To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, Than prompt her to do aught may merit praise.
Capricious, wanton, bold, and brutal Lust Is meanly selfish; when resisted, cruel; And, like the blast of Pestilential Winds, Taints the sweet bloom of Nature's fairest forms.
So hand in hand they passed, the loveliest pair that ever since in love's embraces met -- Adam, the goodliest man of men since born his sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve.