Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
From powerful causes spring the empiric's gains, Man's love of life, his weakness, and his pains; These first induce him the vile trash to try, Then lend his name, that other men may buy.
I still think that there's some kind of psychological investment in black athletes carrying the flag for "us" at times. So, sports [remains a] metaphor for struggle and triumph and flair.
The Italians are wise before the deede, the Germanes in the deede, the French after the deede. [The Italians are wise before the deed, the Germens in the deed, the French after the deed.]
If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.
Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
Our little solos are a note in an immense chorus vibrating grandly through the universe, a chorus which accepts and harmonizes the whir of the cricket and the long drum-roll of the stars.
The dream is not a map. A poem is not the territory. The dreamer reclines in a barbershop carpeted with Afro turf. In the dark some soul yells. It hurts to walk barefoot on cowrie shells.
Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
Kind messages, that pass from land to land; Kind letters, that betray the heart's deep history, In which we feel the pressure of a hand,-- One touch of fire,--and all the rest is mystery!
If the great Captain of Plymouth is so very eager to wed me, Why does he not come himself, and take the trouble to woo me? If I am not worth the wooing, I surely am not worth the winning!
The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; The day returns, but nevermore Returns the traveler to the shore, And the tide rises, the tide falls.
I live and reign since I have abandoned those pleasures which you by your praises extol to the skies. [Lat., Vivo et regno, simul ista reliqui Quae vos ad coelum effertis rumore secundo.]
For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.
History is one of those marvelous and necessary illusions we have to deal with. It's one of the ways of dealing with our world with impossible generalities which we couldn't live without.
A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit.
A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats's odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in a palace: one proceeds, with eager anticipation, from room to room.
Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work: this is the short formula in which we may sum up the teachings of the founders of New England,--a creed ample enough for this life and the next.
The rich man's sons inherits cares; The bank may break, the factory burn, A breath may burst his bubble shares, And soft, white hands could hardly earn A living that would serve his turn.
God's poet is silence! His song is unspoken, And yet so profound, so loud, and so far, It fills you, it thrills you with measures unbroken, And as soft, and as fair, and as far as a star.
Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine, The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate, are mine. Not heaven itself upon the past has power; But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.
Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well; the chiefest part of which is to observe those excellencies which delight a reasonable reader.
Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.
We can understand poetry from a billion - in a billion styles, experiment, tradition, combination, spice, meter, image. It's all there for the poet and for the listener and for all of us.
I've worked throughout California as a poet: in colleges, universities, worker camps, migrant education offices, continuation high schools, juvenile halls, prisons, and gifted classrooms.
We cannot live in the past, nor can we re-create it. Yet as we unravel the past, the future also unfolds before us, as though they are mirrors without which neither can be seen or happen.
I care because I want you to care about me. I care because I have become aware of my absolute dependency upon you, whoever you are, for the outcome of my social, my democratic experience.
Every vice makes its guilt the more conspicuous in proportion to the rank of the offender. [Lat., Omne animi vitium tanto conspectius in se Crimen habet, quanto major qui peccat habetur.]
The Beloved is inside you and also inside me. You know the tree is hidden inside the seed. Let your arrogance go. None of us has gone far. Inside love there is more power than we realize.
Certainly, it seems true enough that there's a good deal of irony in the world... I mean, if you live in a world full of politicians and advertising, there's obviously a lot of deception.
When the newspapers have got nothing else to talk about, they cut loose on the young. The young are always news. If they are up to something, that's news. If they aren't, that's news too.
You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.
Spiritual awakening is the most essential thing in man's life, and it is the sole purpose of being. Is not civilization, in all its tragic forms, a supreme motive for spiritual awakening?
Braving obstacles and hardships is nobler than retreat to tranquility. The butterfly that hovers around the lamp until it dies is more admirable than the mole that lives in a dark tunnel.
This is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever. But I'm not so interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in the future.
Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary, imperial joy and sorrow of human existence, the dreamed as well as the lived— what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?
Quotations (such as have point and lack triteness) from the great old authors are an act of reverence on the part of the quoter, and a blessing to a public grown superficial and external.
No single thing abides; but all things flow. Fragment to fragment clings - the things thus grow Until we know them and name them. By degrees They melt, and are no more the things we know.
The problem is huge. We've just added seventy-five million people to the already large proportion of people in the world who are malnourished all the time, whose bodies are being starved.
What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something.
Debt is not just a money thing. It's about owing and being owed. Money is just one thing you can exchange. You can exchange good deeds, you can exchange revenge, you can exchange murders.
Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth.
You is born lucky, and it's better to be born lucky than born rich, cause if you is lucky you can git rich, but if you is born rich and you ain't lucky you is liables to lose all you got.
Love, love, love, says Percy. And hurry as fast as you can along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust. Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust.
There is nothing better than work. Work is also play; children know that. Children play earnestly as if it were work. But people grow up, and they work with a sorrow upon them. It's duty.
The discipline of the Old Testament may be summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die to it.
Funerals cost so much money, and are likely to be an additional source of stress in this recession - it's sad that we don't have a more humane, less commercialized way to approach burial.
We'll therefore relish with content, Whate'er kind providence has sent, Nor aim beyond our pow'r; For, if our stock be very small, 'Tis prudent to enjoy it all, Nor lose the present hour.
Happy the poet who with ease can steer From grave to gay, from lively to severe. [Lat., Heureux qui, dans ses vers, sait d'une voix legere Passer du grave au doux, du plaisant au severe.]
Life has a tendency to obfuscate and bewilder, Such as fating us to spend the first part of our lives being embarrassed by our parents and the last part being embarrassed by our children.
Brooks too wide for our leaping, hedges far to high. Loads too heavy for our moving, burdens too cumbersome for us to bear. Distances far beyond our journeying. The horse gave us mastery.