Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
POET If not in a place, where are the People weeping? LIBERAL They creep weeping in the face, not place. POET Is it something with which we may cope The weeping, the creeping, the peepee-ing, the peeping?
Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.
it is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him.
THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM [all snap flags] Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.
I don't demonize the downside. As we've seen in Egypt and Tahrir square and other recent event, the adhesiveness through [technology] kinds of communication is extraordinary. Interesting times we live in.
Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.
We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.
Welcome, wild harbinger of spring! To this small nook of earth; Feeling and fancy fondly cling, Round thoughts which owe their birth, To thee, and to the humble spot, Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.
If what you want is actual change, then what has to be built is a mass movement that is militant and can use direct action to slow or stop profit. A movement that can do that can demand whatever it wants.
That in all times, mediocrity has dominated, that is indubitable; but that it reigns more than ever, that it is becoming absolutely triumphant and inhibiting, this is what is as true as it is distressing.
It was a joy! Words weren't dull, words were things that could make your mind hum. If you read them and let yourself feel the magic, you could live without pain, with hope, no matter what happened to you.
There are knives that glitter like altars In a dark church Where they bring the cripple and the imbecile To be healed. There's a woden block where bones are broken, Scraped clean--a river dried to its bed
Not from his head was woman took, As made her husband to o'erlook; Not from his feet, as one designed The footstool of the stronger kind; But fashioned for himself, a bride; An equal, taken from his side.
May its index point to joy, And moments wing'd with new delights. Sweet may resound each silver bell, And never quick returning chime, Seem in reproving notes to tell, Of hours mispent, and murder'd time.
Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude, to be all one.
I write to get myself writing. That and read Wallace Stevens' "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven" for the umpteenth time. Certain authors for me, certain books, just by reading a phrase I feel I can write.
When sunlight falls on a crystal, lights of all colors of the rainbow appear; yet they have no substance that you can grasp. Likewise, all thoughts in their infinite variety are utterly without substance.
I have seen so many poets who were famous, who won all sorts of prizes, disappear with their death. I write as good as I can and don't try to turn that into some hope for a future that I could never know.
During my twenties and thirties, my interest in the political poem increased as my apparent access to it declined. I sensed resistances around me. I was married; I lived in a suburb; I had small children.
Poetry ennobles the heart and the eyes, and unveils the meaning of all things upon which the heart and the eyes dwell. It discovers the secret rays of the universe, and restores to us forgotten paradises.
A kiss, when all is said, what is it? An oath that's given closer than before; A promise more precise; the sealing of Confessions that till then were barely breathed; A rosy dot placed on the i in loving.
But O the exceeding grace Of highest God, that loves his creatures so, And all his works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels, he sends to and fro, To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe.
My wealth is health and perfect ease; My conscience clear my chief defence; I neither seek by bribes to please, Nor by deceit to breed offence. Thus do I live; thus will I die. Would all did so well as I!
We're trying to make something that lasts in language and there's no question that many fiction writers began as poets and it's hard for me to think of any good fiction writers who don't also read poetry.
Usually, I am a compulsive person, and I need - sometimes urgently - to paint... Painting is close to poetry, is a kind of poetry expressed visually. It has to be spontaneous, rapid - at least in my case.
We are only here below as in an inn on a journey. Let us, then have the feelings of travelers. We should think a man very strange who attached himself much to his inn. The wise Christian will not do this.
It seems to me as natural and necessary to keep notes, however brief, of one's reading, as logs of voyages or photographs of one's travels. For memory, in most of us, is a liar with galloping consumption.
Babies breathe a lot more rapidly than adults do, and what's more, they're also growing quickly and so they're absorbing lots more into the body and they're more fragile in terms of development and so on.
To have a young person speak back, to hand him the microphone for his first-person utterances, you'd have to have an imagined architecture, otherwise people would say you're putting words in their mouths.
Around, around, Companions all, take your ground, And name the bell with joy profound! CONCORDIA is the word we've found Most meet to express the harmonious sound, That calls to those in friendship bound.
Read carefully, then don't read; work hard, then forget about it; know your tradition, then liberate yourself from it; learn language, then free yourself from it. Finally, know at least one form of magic.
They who live without Love are dead. / But the worst of all deaths is this -- / That the loving soul be cowardly toward Love; / For perfect Love is never cowardly, / But claims its rights, which it lacks.
There is something very basic to the sense of listening. The sense of hearing is the only one that operates totally from vibrations, without other physical or chemical reactions to receive the sensations.
The shadows of the mind are like those of the body. In the morning of life they all lie behind us; at noon we trample them under foot; and in the evening they stretch long, broad, and deepening before us.
Those who direct the maximum force of their desires toward the center, toward true being, toward perfection, seem quieter than the passionate souls because the flame of their fervor cannot always be seen.
In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child's soul with poetry every day.
I called the world of phenomena an illusion, I called my eyes and my tongue an accident, valueless phenomena. No, that is all over; I have awakened, I have really awakened and I have just been born today.
He, that holds fast the golden mean, And lives contentedly between The little and the great, Feels not the wants that pinch the poor, Nor plagues that haunt the rich man's door, Imbitt'ring all his state.
The wisest man could ask no more of fate Than to be simple, modest, manly, true, Safe from the many, honored by the few; Nothing to court in Church, or World, or State, But inwardly in secret to be great.
Evasions are the common shelter of the hard-hearted, the false, and impotent, when called upon to assist; the real great alone plan instantaneous help, even when their looks or words presage difficulties.
And just as there are no words for the surface, that is, No words to say what it really is, that it is not Superficial but a visible core, then there is No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
Affability, mildness, tenderness, and a word which I would fain bring back to its original signification of virtue,--I mean good-nature,--are of daily use; they are the bread of mankind and staff of life.
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that ofttimes hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Each one could be a Jesus mild, Each one has been a little child, A little child with laughing look, A lovely white unwritten book; A book that God will take, my friend, As each goes out at journey's end.
In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.
What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support, That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men. 1 Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 22.
Sense of pleasure we may well Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine, But live content, which is the calmest life; But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience.
I want to be different. Just like all the other different people I want to be like. I want to be just like all the different people and assert my individuality along with others who are different like me.
There is no better feeling than the feeling that I have done something right. That feeling comes so rarely and is so fleeting that I can never really enjoy it. So in a way, it's not a good feeling at all.
When my mind is operating at its peak, it should depress me to think that this is the best I can do, because it's not very good at all. When my mind is operating normally, I should be even more depressed.