Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Be you wise and never sad, You will get your lovely lad. Never serious be, nor true, And your wish will come to you-- And if that makes you happy, kid, You'll be the first it ever did.
Despite his persecutions, Mr. [Upton] Sinclair reveals himself in Money Writes! to be an enviable man. Always the thing he desires to believe is the thing he feels he knows to be true.
I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.
For that which all men then did virtue call, Is now called vice; and that which vice was hight, Is now hight virtue, and so used of all: Right now is wrong, and wrong that was is right
Why all this toil for triumphs of an hour? What tho' we wade in Wealth, or soar in Fame? Earth's highest station ends in 'Here he lies;' and 'Dust to dust' concludes the noblest songs.
I think of love, and you, and my heart grows full and warm, and my breath stands still... I can feel a sunshine stealing into my soul and making it all summer, and every thorn, a rose.
But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.
If thou wouldst preserve a sound body, use fasting and walking; if a healthful soul, fasting and praying. Walking exercises the body; praying exercises the soul; fasting cleanses both.
For trash and toys, And grief-engend'ring joys, What torment seems too sharp for flesh and blood; What bitter pills, Compos'd of real ills, Men swallow down to purchase one false good!
How can you expect God to speak in that gentle and inward voice which melts the soul, when you are making so much noise with your rapid reflections? Be silent and God will speak again.
This is the love that does all things; that brings to pass even the evils we suffer; so shaping them that they are but instruments of preparing the good which, as yet, has not arrived.
Even now, nature is the only flame, on which the poetic spirit feeds; from it alone it draws all its power, to it alone it speaks even in the artificial, in the man engaged in culture.
Through the sharp air a flaky torrent flies, Mocks the slow sight, and hides the gloomy skies; The fleecy clouds their chilly bosoms bare, And shed their substance on the floating air.
Mankind, from Adam, have been women's fools; Women, from Eve, have been the devil's tools: Heaven might have spar'd one torment when we fell; Not left us women, or not threatened hell.
A discrete series is a series of terms each of which is empirically derived, each one of which is empirically true. And this is the reason for the fragmentary character of those poems.
In youth the human body drew me and was the object of my secret and natural dreams. But body after body has taken away from me that sensual phosphorescence which my youth delighted in.
I take pride in never being rude to anyone on this earth, which contains a great number of unbearable villains who set upon you to recount their sufferings and even recite their poems.
White swan of cities slumbering in thy nest . . . White phantom city, whose untrodden streets Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting Shadows of the palaces and strips of sky.
At that time two opposing concepts of the Game called forth commentary and discussion. The foremost players distinguished two principal types of Game, the formal and the psychological.
You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don't labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.
People have always found me challenging - I don't know why, when I am only being myself. I don't understand why they find me so annoying but they do. It is pity, but that is how it is.
The Ladybug wears no disguises. She is just what she advertises. A speckled spectacle of spring, A fashion statement on the wing.... A miniature orange kite. A tiny dot-to-dot delight.
How our old friend [Michelangelo] of the Sistine would have loved to photograph his workers, perched on the fragile planks. Dali was right to say Leonardo only worked from photographs.
Her face betokened all things dear and good, The light of somewhat yet to come was there Asleep, and waiting for the opening day, When childish thoughts, like flowers would drift away.
Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, Whose foam is amber and their gravel gold; His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, Search not his bottom, but survey his shore.
He must pull out his own eyes, and see no creature, before he can say, he sees no God; He must be no man, and quench his reasonable soul, before he can say to himself, there is no God.
In the corridors under tehre is nothing but sleep. And stiller than ever on orchard boughs they keep Tryst with the moon, and deep is the silence, deep On moon-washed apples of wonder.
Through the open door A drowsy smell of flowers -grey heliotrope And white sweet clover, and shy mignonette Comes fairly in, and silent chorus leads To the pervading symphony of Peace.
The opinion I have of the generality of women--who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a sugar plum than my time, forms a barrier against matrimony which I rejoice in.
How charming is divine philosophy! Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets Where no crude surfeit reigns
Fame, if not double fac'd, is double mouth'd, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight.
The later rain,--it falls in anxious haste Upon the sun-dried fields and branches bare, Loosening with searching drops the rigid waste, As if it would each root's lost strength repair.
People often say, "Riots aren't revolutions." That's true. The vast majority of riots never become revolutionary. On the other hand, show me the revolution that started without a riot.
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman. There is not even a rope to tow the boat, and no one to pull it. There is no earth, no sky, no time, no thing, no shore, no ford!
Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.
She danced the dance of flames and fire, and the dance of swords and spears; she danced the dance of stars and the dance of space, and then she danced the dance of flowers in the wind.
. . . All artists’ work is autobiographical. Any writer’s work is a map of their psyche. You can really see what their concerns are, what their obsessions are, and what interests them.
But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.
With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.
A large bare forehead gives a woman a masculine and defying look. The word "effrontery" comes from it. The hair should be brought over such a forehead as vines are trailed over a wall.
Strange mystery of our nature, that those in whom genius develops itself in imagination, thus taking its most ethereal form, should yet be the most dependent on the opinions of others!
Better--while life is quick And every pain immense and joy supreme, And all I have and am Flames upward to the dream ... Than like a taper forgotten in the dawn, Burning out the quick.
War is being declared tomorrow here so perhaps you can understand that I have been working under difficulties, but difficulties negligible compared with what others have to go through.
Like many modern poets, I tend to conceal rhymes by placing them in the middle of lines, and to avoid immediate alliteration and assonance in favor of echoes placed later in the poems.
How much do I love thee? Go ask the deep sea How many rare gems In its coral caves be; Or ask the broad billows, That ceaselessly roar, How many bright sands Do they kiss on the shore?
Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.
Somewhere back a whiskey or so ago I wrote that thinking was a real thing in the world, just like anything else. I mean that very literally, materially. And it's true about poems, too.
You know, it's kind of hard because I really - I see kids on their Rollerblades and their bikes, and just running around, climbing trees, and I used to do that. And I loved doing that.
I can understand people simply fleeing the mountainous effort Christmas has become... but there are always a few saving graces and finally they make up for all the bother and distress.
My musical genius reached its apex thirty years ago when I played the triangle in Haydn's children's symphony, so I could not play unless you needed someone to make one sustained note!