Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The cat jumps up on the bed and tries to get onto my head. It's his way of telling whether or not i'm dead. If i'm not, he wants to be scratched; if i am - he'll think of something
Now when you hates you shrinks up inside and gets littler and you squeezes your heart tight and you stays so mad with peoples you feels sick all the time like you needs the doctor.
I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.
When your consciousness has become ripe in true zazen-pure like clear water, like a serene mountain lake, not moved by any wind-then anything may serve as a medium for realization.
Solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people... precludes awareness of one's self so that after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.
I think whenever you love something or somebody it means that you have to extend yourself, you have to grow - get a little larger. You can't stay in your little comfortable - spot.
Art for Duchamp, all the arts, obey the same law: meta-irony is inherent in their very spirit. It is an irony that destroys its own negation and, hence, returns in the affirmative.
Your hair may be brushed, but your mind's untidy. You've had about seven hours of sleep since Friday. No wonder you feel that lost sensation. You're sunk from a riot of relaxation.
Friendship is but a name, faith is an empty name. Alas, it is not safe to praise to a friend the object of your love; as soon as he believes your praises, he slips into your place.
Loss leaves us empty - but learn not to close your heart and mind in grief. Allow life to replenish you. When sorrow comes it seems impossible - but new joys wait to fill the void.
The second-grade films - where are they? No more are they made, and yet they were by far the best films for holding hands at, and wasn't this always the main purpose of the cinema?
You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed.
Happy the heart that keeps its twilight hour, And, in the depths of heavenly peace reclined, Loves to commune with thoughts of tender power,-- A shining Jacob's-ladder of the mind!
Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it; and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.
And the rose like a nymph to the bath addrest, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air, The soul of her beauty and love lay bare.
The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.
Selflessness is like waiting in a hospital In a badly-fitting suit on a cold wet morning. Selfishness is like listening to good jazz With drinks for further orders and a huge fire.
Though God alone never tastes woe, Yet that man is happy, and poets sing of him, Who conquers with hand or swift foot And wins the greatest of prizes By steadfastness and strength.
The churchyard is the market place where all things are rated at their true value, and those who are approaching it talk of the world and its vanities with a wisdom unknown before.
Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?
If we call the young ones, say 10 to 30 years old, 'siblings,' we can see they tend to be naturally ecological. They regard whales and owls as siblings too. That's a great advance.
John Barleycorn was a hero bold, Of noble enterprise, For if you do but taste his blood, 'Twill make your courage rise, Twill make a man forget his wo; 'Twill heighten all his joy.
There is scarcely anything to which I am so feelingly alive as the honour and welfare of my country, and, as a poet, I have no higher enjoyment than singing her sons and daughters.
Writing is the same as music. It’s in how you phrase it, how you hold back the note, bend it, shape it, then release it. And what you don’t play is as important as what you do say.
The irony of our social group is that so often everyone feels this, but there's no company whatsoever in that feeling. Think of Pound's great emphasis, the way out is via the door.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.
Someone in Ireland asked me how many Republican poets there were in the U.S., and I thought maybe two. Maybe there are 10,000 poets, and maybe there are two Republicans among them.
people are capable of profound metamorphosis, though unfortunately they rarely avail themselves of this genius, force of habit being an even greater enemy of change than cowardice.
In our society, to be obsessed with a vision about how to make a better automobile makes you a genius, but to be obsessed with a vision about the nature of reality makes you a nut.
I live in Cullowhee, North Carolina. That's where I teach, at Western Carolina University. That region is where my family has lived for a long time and that region is my landscape.
Though Destiny a hundred times waylays you,in the end it pitches a tent for you in Heaven. It is God's loving kindness to terrify you,in order to lead you to His Kingdom of safety.
Be quiet now and wait. It may be that the ocean one, the one we desire so to move into and become, desires us out here on land a little longer, going our sundry roads to the shore.
Everything is emptiness. Everything else, accidental. Emptiness brings peace to your loving. Everything else, disease. In this world of trickery, emptiness is what your soul wants.
Longing is the core of mystery. Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, suffer the pain. Your desires must be disciplined And what you want to happen in time, sacrificed.
You sit here for days saying, this is a strange business. You're the strange business. You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine.
Every fragile beauty, every perfect forgotten sentence, you grieve their going away, but that is not how it is. Where they come from never goes dry. It is an always flowing spring.
He who learns, and makes no use of his learning, is a beast of burden with a load of books. Does the ass comprehend whether he carries on his back a library or a bundle of faggots?
The sea does not contain all the pearls, the earth does not enclose all the treasures, and the flint-stone does not inclose all the diamonds, since the head of man encloses wisdom.
Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame; It is the reflex of our earthly frame, That takes its meaning from the nobler part, And but translates the language of the heart.
If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom," she's going to call me "Point B," because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me.
Poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me. I like to poem my way through tricky questions and ideas. That's about the only consistent thread through my poem-creation process.
Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.
Don't tell me that [broken heartstrings] hurt less than a broken bone, that an ingrown life is something surgeons can cut away, that there's no way for it to metastasize - it does.
I hear poetry whenever I turn on the radio. Eminem is a better poet than just about everybody. He's better than Billy Collins; he's better than Richard Wilbur; he's better than me.
Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling," she used to say. "Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact?
Like officer Dave.He's never said much about his life, but I can tell he's scarred. And he knows I'm scarred too. The wounded always recognize the wounded. We can smell each other.
I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I never write about CIA conspiracies or the FBI or mafia or anything like that because I just don't understand that world. But I think I do understand individual human harmfulness.
When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.
But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?