Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.
I also think that life itself is both indifferent to us and the source of all of our joys and everything that we love. And it's necessary to accept the one in order to love the other.
The winter is made and you have to bear it, The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind, For all the thoughts of summer that go with it In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags.
Wisdom is not finally tested by the schools, Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it, Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.
My little notebooks were beginnings - they were the ground into which I dropped the seed... I would work in this way when I was out in the crowds, then put the stuff together at home.
The soul is always beautiful, it appears more or it appears less, it comes or it lags behind, It comes from its embowered garden and looks pleasantly on itself and encloses the world.
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
Some moralist or mythological poet Compares the solitary soul to a swan; I am satisfied with that, Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it, Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.
It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike.
The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ.
As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. Yet all must copy copies, all increase their kind.
This fond attachment to the well-known place Whence first we started into life's long race, Maintains its hold with such unfailing sway, We feel it e'en in age, and at our latest day.
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men's blood: I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know.
Fight, gentlemen of England! fight, bold yeomen! Draw, archers, draw your arrows to the head! Spur your proud horses hard, and ride in blood; Amaze the welkin with your broken staves!
Villains, vipers, damn'd without redemption; Dogs, easily won to fawn on any man; Snakes in my heart-blood warm'd, that sing my heart; Three Judases, each one thrice worse than Judas.
His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles; his love sincere, his thoughts immaculate; his tears pure messengers sent from his heart; his heart as far from fraud, as heaven from earth
Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows Like harmony in music; there is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society.
I can easily do without people (there are days when I could easily do without myself), and ... in the country of books where I dwell, the dead can count entirely as much as the living.
To seek visions, to dream dreams, is essential, and it is also essential to try new ways of living, to make room for serious experimentation, to respect the effort even where it fails.
Those that expose themselves as knowing the truth, lose the battle of innocence and humility and eventually pull a trigger at the universe. Wisdom chooses the unknown to be its reason.
Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.
Bullies, oppressors and all men who do violence to the rights of others are guilty not only of their own crimes, but also of the corruption they bring into the hearts of their victims.
A king may be a tool, a thing of straw; but if he serves to frighten our enemies, and secure our property, it is well enough; a scarecrow is a thing of straw, but it protects the corn.
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day, Charm'd the small-pox, or chas'd old age away; . . . . To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint, Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint.
See! From the brake the whirring pheasant springs, And mounts exulting on triumphant wings; Short is his joy! He feels the fiery wound, Flutters in blood, and panting beats the ground.
Life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom, To shape and use.
The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, And the man said, "Am I your debtor?" And the Lord--"Not yet: but make it as clean as you can, And then I will let you a better.
Concentrate on what you want to say to yourself and your friends. Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. You say what you want to say when you don't care who's listening.
Great emotion always tends to become rhythmic, and out of that tendency the forms of art have been evolved. Art becomes artificial only when the forms take precedence over the emotion.
The dog is a religious animal. In his savage state he worships the moon and the lights that float upon the waters. These are his gods to whom he appeals at night with long-drawn howls.
Mind led body to the edge of the precipice. They stared in desire at the naked abyss. If you love me, said mind, take that step into silence. If you love me, said body, turn and exist.
I am a poet, bard, scop, minnesinger, trobairitz who is driven by sound and the possibilities for vocal expression, the mouthing of text as well as intentionality or dance on the page.
I get worked up over an 'idea' or the ethos of an idea. I follow dreams, take notes on travels, and engage in research often - if I need names, details, facts that enhance the project.
Ghetto-dwellers are the great fantasists. There was an extraordinary vibrancy there, an imaginative life. When you are that poor, all you've got left is your belief in the imagination.
Attempts to put my poems to music have had disastrous results in all cases. And the poem, if it's written with the ear, already has been set to its own verbal music as it was composed.
I think art is communication. To that extent, it can be the words between the words. It has a possibility of communicating something more than people can do with prose or just talking.
As before the collapse, the setting sun brushed the tiles, brought out the warm brown glow on the wallpaper, and hung the shadow of the birch on the wall as if it were a woman's scarf.
I came to see that what constitutes strength is not just a muscle or will. It can also include the most desperate vulnerability, the saddest heartache, the lightest, sweetest laughter.
How bittersweet it is, on winter's night, To listen, by the sputtering, smoking fire, As distant memories, through the fog-dimmed light, Rise, to the muffled chime of churchbell choir.
We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
I met a genius on the train today about 6 years old, he sat beside me and as the train ran down along the coast we came to the ocean and then he looked at me and said, it’s not pretty.
Who to patch up his fame, or fill his purse, Still pilfers wretched plans, and makes them worse; Like gypsies, lest the stolen brat be known, Defacing first, then claiming for his own.
It's like you're organically developing yourself, moving out, metamorphosing into other forms depending on where you are, what you're doing at the time, how you want to play on things.
Why does the sea moan evermore? Shut out from heaven it makes its moan, It frets against the boundary shore; All earth's full rivers cannot fill The sea, that drinking thirsteth still.
Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.
It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life.
I feel deep gratitude for the life poetry has allowed me to live. I know the life I could have lived without it. Both on the physical plain, and the soul plain. Poetry helps us endure.
I share my life experiences as a poet with my students. My poetic difficulties, joys, struggles and discoveries. If I read a new poem or essay or book I'm excited about, I bring it in.