Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.
You learned people and artists have, no doubt, all sorts of superior things in your heads; but you're human beings like the rest of us, and we, too, have our dreams and fancies.
When all the Self was conquered and dead, when all passions and desires were silent, then the last must awaken, the innermost of Being that is no longer Self - the great secret!
The world turns softly Not to spill its lakes and rivers, The water is held in its arms And the sky is held in the water. What is water, That pours silver, And can hold the sky?
Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.
I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate.
True love is but a humble, low born thing, And hath its food served up in earthenware; It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand, Through the every-dayness of this workday world.
Every generous illusion of youth leaves a wrinkle as it departs. Experience is the successive disenchanting of the things of life; it is reason enriched with the heart's spoils.
People need what they think of as a poem to be read at their bar mitzvah, their wedding, a funeral, whatever. And people are looking for hope and inspiration. I understand that.
Rhythms and sounds are often the first thing I hear and want in a poem, so I can't imagine trying to translate something without at least being able to hear what it sounds like.
In raising a people from slavery to freedom, you have called them to act on a new theatre; and it is a necessary part of your business, to teach them how to perform their parts.
Women ought to be fully guarded by law in all rights of property, labor, profession, etc.; but, roughly stated, the voting population ought to represent the fighting population.
God affords no man the comfort, the false comfort of Atheism: He will not allow a pretending Atheist the power to flatter himself, so far, as to seriously think there is no God.
True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore ; this is the second of our reign.
And that the Scriptures, though not everywhere Free from corruption, or entire, or clear, Are uncorrupt, sufficient, clear, entire In all things which our needful faith require.
But blast the man, with curses loud and deep, Whate'er the rascal's name, or age, or station, Who first invented, and went round advising, That artificial cut-off, Early Rising!
Young playmates of the rose and daffodil, Be careful ere ye enter in, to fill Your baskets high With fennel green, and balm, and golden pines Savory latter-mint, and columbines.
I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave--thank God for the quiet grave--O! I can feel the cold earth upon me--the daisies growing over me--O for this quiet--it will be my first.
I hold that when a person dies / His soul returns again to earth; / Arrayed in some new flesh disguise / Another mother gives him birth / With sturdier limbs and brighter brain.
Our two first parents, yet the only two Of mankind, in the happy garden placed, Reaping immortal fruits of joy and love, Uninterrupted joy, unrivalled love In blissful solitude.
Wealth and honours, which most men pursue, easily change masters; they desert to the side which excels in virtue, industry, and endurance of toil, and they abandon the slothful.
Now morn, her rosy steps in th' eastern clime Advancing, sow'd the earth with orient pearl, When Adam wak'd, so custom'd; for his sleep Was aery light, from pure digestion bred.
Brilliant, hard-earned and honest. The erasures and reappearances of figure and ground-that hard drama-have rarely been so movingly undertaken. A heartbreakingly beautiful work.
I'm a political poet - let us say a 'human' poet, a poet that's concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that's what I'm going to use.
Coming out was crucial to changing attitudes about gays and lesbians: will people feel differently about abortion if they know their mother, their aunt, or their friend had one?
Some of the French surrealists at the beginning of the war had come over to New York and they brought out this magazine. It was a big, glossy magazine full of surrealist things.
Even as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you, so the wicked and the weak cannot fall lower than the lowest which is in you also.
Every woman must live by some sense of victory over disappointments, and Olympias was not the sort of woman to find compensation in her own powers of self-control and endurance.
we shall know that we have begun to speak true by an increased hunger for true-speaking; we shall have the whole hunger only after we have given ourselves the first taste of it.
Gently I stir a white feather fan, With open shirt sitting in a green wood. I take off my cap and hang it on a jutting stone; A wind from the pine-tree trickles on my bare head.
Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.
Great were the lamentation and the cry when the news of this mischance was noised about the city. Such a tumult of mourning was never before heard, for the whole city was moved.
The ambiguities of language, both in terms of vocabulary and syntax, are fascinating: how important connotation is, what is lost and what is gained in the linguistic transition.
I suppose one has to remember that 'life' is important too, though it's something I forget in some moods, everything except work seeming like an interruption or really non-life.
A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.
We don't have to be good, you know? No one's telling us that we have to do good things, but we do them because we know it makes other people feel good and it makes us feel good.
'Star Wars' is mythology. It's like Greek mythology or Shakespeare. It's the story of good versus evil over a very long span of time. The storytelling is universal and timeless.
Poetry, in the past, was the center of our society, but with modernity it has retreated to the outskirts. I think the exile of poetry is also the exile of the best of humankind.
In the works of Duchamp, space begins to walk and take on form; it becomes a machine that spins arguments and philosophizes; it resists movement with delay and delay with irony.
Perhaps the whisper was born before lips, And the leaves in treelessness circled and flew, And those, to whom we impart our experience as bliss, Acquire their forms before we do
Nothing is so high and above all danger that is not below and in the power of God. [Lat., Nihil ita sublime est, supraque pericula tendit Non sit ut inferius suppositumque deo.]
Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, is a monster for which the corruption of society forever brings forth new food, which it devours in secret.
You ought to love all mankind; nay, every individual of mankind. You ought not to love the individuals of your domestic circles less, but to love those who exist beyond it more.
Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.
Where you are is of no moment, but only what you are doing there. It is not the place that ennobles you, but you the place, and this only by doing that which is great and noble.
Do you suppose there is any living man so unreasonable that if he found himself stricken with a dangerous ailment he would not anxiously desire to regain the blessing of health?
Star canto: star speaks light, and world to world Repeats the passage of the universe To God; the name of Christ--the one great word Well worth all languages in earth or heaven.
Laughter almost ever cometh of things most disproportioned to ourselves and nature: delight hath a joy in it either permanent or present; laughter hath only a scornful tickling.
Have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Do not despair if the answers don't come immediately. Some answers are only revealed with the passage of time.
Be patient with all that is uncertain in your heart...do not search for answers, which will not be given: you will not be able to live them, and its importat to live everything.