Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The poet resists the pressures of reality, including the pressures of violence, in making, in forming, the poem. The tension is in the resistance - the poem is an act of resistance.
Ah, tell me not that memory Sheds gladness o'er the past; What is recalled by faded flowers, Save that they did not last? Were it not better to forget, Than but remember and regret?
I have a respect for family pride. If it be a prejudice, it is a prejudice in its most picturesque shape. But I hold it is connected with some of the noblest feelings in our nature.
A child without an acquaintance of some kind with a classic of literature ... suffers from that impoverishment for the rest of his life. No later intimacy is like that of the first.
All the ills of mankind spring from belonging to a race, a nation, a city, a group of some kind. The ideal would be to belong to none, and to care for allbut who is capable of that?
The way love feels is always only approximate. I would like to be without shame. I would like to be shameless. I would like to be ignorant. Then I would not know how ignorant I was.
If social stability goes pear-shaped, you have a choice between anarchy and dictatorship. Most people will opt for more security, even if they have to give up some personal freedom.
While in a vintage restaurant..."the past isn't quaint while you're in it. Only at a safe distance, later, when you see it as decor, not as the shape your life's been squeezed into.
Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the windroaring and whimpering in the rooms.
Who gives to friends so much from Fate secures, That is the only wealth for ever yours. [Lat., Extra fortunam est, quidquid donatur amicis; Quas dederis, selas semper habebis opes.]
It helps, I think, to consider ourselves on a very long journey: the main thing is to keep to the faith, to endure, to help each other when we stumble or tire, to weep and press on.
Writing a poem ... is a kind of possible love affair between something like the heart (that courageous but also shy factory of emotion) and the learned skills of the conscious mind.
Although your physical body was created, you are the one who makes this body function. In other words, you are the divine life known as God. I call it a life branching out from God.
Take your materials from what is around you - if you see a dandelion, write about that; if it's misty, write about the mist. The materials for poetry are all about you in profusion.
I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this, we need to be careful with drugs! They're not just all fun and games! And of course poetry would be immeasurably worse without humor.
Remember to look at your glass half full and not half empty. A lot of my strength comes from God. God has given me a gift - the gift of life - and it's amazing that I live each day.
I never question God. Sometimes I say, 'Why me? Why do I have such a hard life? Why do I have this disease? Why do I have siblings who died?' But then I think and say, 'Why not me?'
The price of being oneself is so high and involves so much ruthlessness toward others (or what looks like ruthlessness in our duty-bound culture) that very few people can afford it.
My parents said sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you. But I always felt a sense of exhilaration after a fight; it was the names that really hurt me.
The characteristic feature of modernity is criticism: what is new is set over and against what is old, and it is this constant contrast that constitutes the continuity of tradition.
When all the other animals, downcast looked upon the earth, he [Prometheus] gave a face raised on high to man, and commanded him to see the sky and raise his high eyes to the stars.
Human beings are drawn to cats because they are all we are not — self-contained, elegant in everything they do, relaxed, assured, glad of company, yet still possessing secret lives.
We must act together, as a united people... For the birth of a new world. Let there be justice for all. Let there be peace for all. Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
Sometimes, as in an athletic event where everything clicks, inexplicable things do happen. Learning and practicing an art or a skill has always been part of the success of the goal.
And Potomac flowed calmly, scarce heaving her breast, With her low-lying billows all bright in the west, For a charm as from God lulled the waters to rest Of the fair rolling river.
We reduce the deity to vulgar fractions. We place our own little ambitions and label them ?divine messages?. With our short sight we affect to take a comprehensive view of eternity.
You are now In London, that great sea, whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wrecks, and still howls on for more. Yet in its depth what treasures!
Our being is continually undergoing and entering upon changes. ... We must, strictly speaking, at every moment give each other up and let each other go and not hold each other back.
Believe that with your feelings and your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate this belief, the more will reality and the world go forth from it.
when General Eisenhower defined an intellectual as "a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows", he was speaking not as a Republican but as an American.
The best of causes ruins as quickly as the worst; and the road to Limbo is paved with writers who have done everything I am being sympathetic, not satiric for the very best reasons.
Man associates ideas not according to logic or verifiable exactitude, but according to his pleasure and interests. It is for this reason that most truths are nothing but prejudices.
Rockefeller made his money in oil, which he discovered at the bottom of wells. Oil was considered crude in those days, but so was Rockefeller. Now both are considered quite refined.
There is no balm of Gilead, No salve, no soothing ointment To stay the pain of one who's had In love a disappointment-- Unless it be that healing lotion Of fixing on a new devotion.
Since ancient Time began, Ever on some great soul God laid an infinite burden-- The weight of all this world, the hopes of man, Conflict and pain, and fame immortal are his guerdon.
Going to the library was the one place we got to go without asking for permission. And they let us choose what we wanted to read. It was a feeling of having a book be mine entirely.
Dweller in yon dungeon dark, Hangman of creation, mark! Who in widow weeds appears, Laden with unhonoured years, Noosing with care a bursting purse, Baited with many a deadly curse?
There is something so mean and unmanly in the arts of dissimulation and falsehood that I am surprised they can be used by anyone in so noble, so generous a passion as virtuous love.
Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.
There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can't move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.
There is no love. There's only love of men and women, love Of children, love of friends, of men, of God: Divine love, human love, parental love, Roughly discriminated for the rough.
I am assured at any rate Man's practically inexterminate. Someday I must go into that. There's always been an Ararat Where someone someone else begat To start the world all over at.
Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another; now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
What we usually find is that when people think they have a new idea or approach something for the first time, it is actually a recurrence of a line of thinking explored in the past.
Who born so poor, Of intellect so mean, as not to know What seem'd the best; and knowing not to do? As not to know what God and conscience bade, And what they bade not able to obey?
A man may be cheerful and contented in celibacy, but I do not think he can ever be happy; it is an unnatural state, and the best feelings of his nature are never called into action.
You making haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
Quite a lot of our contemporary culture is actually shot through with a resentment of limits and the passage of time, anger at what we can't do, fear or even disgust at growing old.
You are a volume in the divine book A mirror to the power that created the universe Whatever you want, ask it of yourself Whatever you’re looking for can only be found Inside of you
Pow'r above pow'rs! O heavenly eloquence! That with the strong rein of commanding words, Dost manage, guide, and master th' eminence Of men's affections, more than all their swords!