Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The spirit is so near that you can't see it! But reach for it... don't be a jar, full of water, whose rim is always dry. Don't be the rider who gallops all night and never sees the horse that is beneath him.
Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
Spend all you have for loveliness, Buy it and never count the cost; For one white singing hour of peace Count many a year of strife well lost, And for a breath of ecstasy Give all you have been, or could be.
Life has loveliness to sell, / Music like a curve of gold, / Scent of pine trees in the rain, / Eyes that love you, arms that hold, / And for your spirit's still delight, / Holy thoughts that star the night.
What am I writing for anyway? Is it like dreaming? Is it a benevolent process? Something that moves the past forward? And what about those people who say all you get from looking at the past is a stiff neck?
Every day I get better at knowing that it is not a choice to be an activist; rather, it is the only way to hold on to the better parts of my human self. It is the only way I can live and laugh without guilt.
Why am I exactly this and not that being? at this point of unlimited space and in this moment of infinite time? in this group of beings, on this planet? Why do I exist if I could have been without existence?
Under the olive trees, from the ground Grows this flower, which is a wound. It is easier to ignore Than the heroes' sunset fire Of death plunged in their willed desire Raging with flags on the world's shore.
Taking the decision-making process away from people disempowers them. It also makes them much less likely to buy into the decision, however right it may be. One’s own conscience remains the ultimate arbiter.
Sing hey! Sing hey! For Christmas Day; Twine mistletoe and holly. For a friendship glows In winter snows, And so let's all be jolly! At Christmas play and make good cheer, For Christmas comes but once a year
Every diminution of the liberty of the press is followed by a diminution of civilization. Wherever we see the freedom of the press interfered with, there we see the nutrition of the human family interrupted.
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
I see little hope for a peaceful world until men are excluded from the realm of foreign policy altogether and all decisions concerning international relations are reserved for women, preferably married ones.
It's frightening how easy it is to commit murder in America. Just a drink too much. I can see myself doing it. In England, one feels all the social restraints holding one back. But here, anything can happen.
This is what I have heard at last the wind in December lashing the old trees with rain unseen rain racing along the tiles under the moon wind rising and falling wind with many clouds trees in the night wind.
Walking on willow tree roads by a river dappled with peach blossoms, I look for spring light, but am everywhere lost. Birds fly up and scatter floating catkins. A ponderous wave of flowers sags the branches.
Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.
If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed: I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made.
I thought my friends were damn fools, because they didn't know any better way of conducting their lives. Still they conformed better than I to a code. I wanted to conform but I couldn't so I wrote my poetry.
Yes, faith; it is my cousin's duty to make curtsy and say 'Father, as it please you.' But yet for all that, cousin, let him be a handsome fellow, or else make another curtsy and say 'Father, as it please me.
Spirits are not finely touched But to fine issues, nor Nature never lends The smallest scruple of her excellence But like a thrifty goddess she determines Herself the glory of a creditor,Both thanks and use.
'Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat's tongue, you bull's pizzle, you stock-fish! O for breath to utter what is like thee! you tailor's-yard, you sheath, you bowcase; you vile standing-tuck!
Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.
If in any divination the Tenth Card should be a Court Card, it shews that the subject of the divination falls ultimately into the hands of a person represented by that card, and its end depends mainly on him.
Nothing in Nature's sober found, But an eternal Health goes round. Fill up the Bowl then, fill it high-- Fill all the Glasses there; for why Should every Creature Drink but I? Why, Man of Morals, tell me why?
I remember thinking, without pride of self-pity, that I was not rich or poor, that I wasn't good or bad. But that was difficult: to be neither good nor bad. It seemed to me, in the end, the same as being bad.
Narcissism and the Confederate dead cannot be connected logically, or even historically; even were the connection an historical fact, they would not stand connected as art, for no one experiences raw history.
Pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring, pulling off the elopement wedding ring, and holding them, clicking them in thumb and forefinger, the indent of twenty-five years, like a tiny rip leaving its mark.
A lot of my poems either have historical sequences or other kinds of chronological grids where I'm locating myself in time. I like to feel oriented, and I like to orient the reader at the beginning of a poem.
[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.
I love teaching poetry writing. Students come into the class thinking poetry has to be one way, then leave having created pieces that are wholly original, that have - quite literally - never been made before.
Cautiously, I allowed myself to feel good at times. I found moments of peace in cheap rooms just staring at the knobs of some dresser or listening to the rain in the dark. The less I needed the better I felt.
The king can drink the best of wine -So can I;And has enough when he would dine -So have I;And can not order rain or shine -Nor can I.Then where's the difference - let me see -Betwixt my lord the king and me?
Go, forget me - why should sorrow, O'er that brow a shadow fling? Go, forget me - and tomorrow, brightly smile and sweetly sing. Smile - though I shall not be near thee; Sing - though I shall never hear thee.
For me her image, the triptych, became a study of the weight the black male figure carries, given the fact that they are targeted by the police, and are constantly in danger of being misread in public spaces.
There were times when depression, anxiety, whatever, would keep me from writing. I still get depressed and anxious, but I just don't let it stop me. I've just learned to move it to one side if I want to work.
Though it does seem like I have written an immense amount of work, over the years I have pushed the pause button. I have poems that I haven't sent out for publication, mostly based on political/social issues.
If you want to be a writer in the world you really have to sit down and say, 'Why do I want to do this and why was I drawn to it to begin with?' And keep reminding yourself to return to that original impulse.
How obvious it is now--the gift you gave him. All those letters, they were you... All those beautiful powerful words, they were you!.. The voice from the shadows, that was you... You always loved me!" Roxanne
My mind to me a kingdom is, Such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss That earth affords or grows by kind. Though much I want which most would have, Yet still my mind for bids to crave.
In American tradition a certain kind of, I would say, desperate American friendliness in which the poet tries to reach out through the page to make a connection by the side of the road with some other person.
It is a great thing, when our Gethsemane hours come, when the cup of bitterness is pressed to our lips ... to feel that it is not fate, that it is not necessity, but divine love for good ends working upon us.
We say that the world's magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created eternal, omnipresent speed.
Things temporal are sweeter in the expectation, things eternal are sweeter in the fruition; the first shames thy hope, the second crowns it; it is a vain journey, whose end affords less pleasure than the way.
The youth who, like a woman, loves to adorn his person, has renounced all claim to wisdom and to glory; glory is due to those only who dare to associate with pain, and have trampled pleasure under their feet.
In the marvelous month of May when all the buds were bursting, then in my heart did love arise. In the marvelous month of May when all the birds were singing, then did I reveal to her my yearning and longing.
There cannot be found in the animal kingdom a bat, or any other creature, so blind in its own range of circumstance and connection, as the greater majority of human beings are in the bosoms of their families.
Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.
To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastophe of nature.
Men's thoughts and opinions are in a great degree vassals of him who invents a new phrase or re-applies an old epithet. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated becomes his at last who utters it best.