Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Look, lovers: almost separately they come towards us through the flowery grass and slowly; parting's so far from thought of, they indulge the extravagance of walking unembraced.
A Cambridge lady, hearing of the latest Suicide, said to her friend, turning off TV for tea, "Well, my dear, doesn't it seem a little like going where you haven't been invited?"
My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.
We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, though monsters of abstractions police and threaten us.
Whatever posessions and objects of its desires the lower self may obtain, it hangs on to them, refusing to let them go out of greed for more, or out of fear of poverty and need.
Do you think I know what I'm doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it's writing, or the ball can guess where it's going next.
If you can't smell the fragrance don't come into the garden of Love. if you are unwilling to undress don't enter into the stream of Truth. Stay where you are, don't come our way
Late, by myself, in the boat of myself, no light and no land anywhere, cloudcover thick. I try to stay just above the surface, yet I'm already under and living within the ocean.
It's all a terrible tragedy. And yet, in it's details, it's great fun. And - apart from the tragedy - I've never felt happier or better in my life than in those days in Belgium.
So will I build my altar in the fields, And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.
My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally.
Best to say that once a poem is finished I trust it to make its way, and I trust readers will find their way to it and through it, if the thing has got itself rightly expressed.
I think that there are fiction writers for whom that works well. I could never do it. I feel as if, by the time I see that it's a poem, it's almost written in my head somewhere.
There was a lot about the military that I thought was pretty silly, but these cartoons weren't meant to take a poke at anybody or anything. They were meant to make people laugh.
The crimes in my books are committed by people who can't keep it together any more. They do something to express their own pain, and that has a terrible effect on somebody else.
Hell is not fire and brimstone, not a place where you are punished for lying or cheating or stealing. Hell is wanting to be something and somewhere different from where you are.
You have to go through the darkness to truly know the light. This may sound like a cliche, but it's true nonetheless. Often the greatest doubts occur just before a breakthrough.
The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall. It is like a prayer to what is empty And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers: 'I am not empty, I am open'.
A fool is he that comes to preach or prate, When men with swords their right and wrong debate. [It., Chi conta i colpi e la dovuta offesa, Mentr' arde la tenzon, misura e pesa?]
It is easy to go down into Hell; night and day, the gates of dark Death stand wide; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air - there's the rub, the task.
Gentle souls! You play your love on the violin. The crude ones play it on the drums violently. But can you turn yourselves inside out, like me And become just two lips entirely?
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone. Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams, Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical, I and this mystery here we stand.
I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears; and caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts; and buckled with a smile Mausers and Colts; and rusted every bayonet with His tears.
When I begin to eliminate from the list all those professions which are impossible from a financial point of view and then those which I feel disinclined to - it leaves nothing.
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark, Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
Overcome the Empyrean; hurl Heaven and Earth out of their places, That in the same calamity Brother and brother, friend and friend, Family and family, City and city may contend.
John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.
Hast thou not learnd what thou art often told, A truth still sacred, and believed of old, That no success attends on spears and swords Unblest, and that the battle is the Lords?
If hindrances obstruct the way, Thy magnanimity display. And let thy strength be seen: But O, if Fortune fill thy sail With more than a propitious gale, Take half thy canvas in.
Beauty's a doubtful good, a glass, a flower, Lost, faded, broken, dead within an hour; And beauty, blemish'd once, for ever's lost, In spite of physic, painting, pain, and cost.
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; Life and these lips have long been separated: Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
O, let my books be then the eloquence And dumb presagers of my speaking breast, Who plead for love, and look for recompense, More than that tongue that more hath more expressed.
Bring me a constant woman to her husband, One that ne'er dream'd a joy beyond his pleasure, And to that woman, when she has done most, Yet will I add an honour-a great patience.
O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile, Hath not old custom made this life more sweet Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods More free from peril than the envious court?
Ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and thenthere is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks.
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the arts, the academes, That show, contain and nourish all the world.
Make use of time, let not advantage slip; Beauty within itself should not be wasted: Fair flowers that are not gather'd in their prime Rot and consume themselves in little time.
. . . nothing in his life Became him like the leaving it; he died As one that had been studied in his death To throw away the dearest thing he owed, As 'twere a careless trifle.
Let none presume To wear an undeserved dignity. O that estates, degrees, and offices Were not derived corruptly, and that clear honour Were purchased by the merit of the wearer!
'Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed, When not to be, receives reproach of being, And the just pleasure lost, which is so deemed, Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
Alas, that love, so gentle in his view, Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof! *It’s sad. Love looks like a nice thing, but it’s actually very rough when you experience it.*
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date . . .
Fie, thou dishonest Satan! I call thee by the most modest terms; for I am one of those gentle ones that will use the devil himself with courtesy: sayest thou that house is dark?
He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.
You have to give your art everything you can - I don't mean only writing, but studying other poets and poetics, thinking, reading what poets have written other than their poetry.
When someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you’re not in it, there’s a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.
Every man, for the sake of the great blessed Mother in Heaven, and for the love of his own little mother on earth, should handle all womankind gently, and hold them in all Honor.
Jenni Fagan is the real thing, and The Panopticon is a real treat: maturely alive to the pains of maturing, and cleverly amused as well as appalled by what it finds in the world.