Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I write abundantly. And then my next step is to struggle to reduce the ornament, to reduce the abundance-to prune the book, in other words, the way one prunes a tree-so it can grow. This is my idea of a book.
Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don't like - then cultivate it. That's the only part of your work that's individual and worth keeping.
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me, And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
There's always some reason not to be writing and I regret the times I give in to that, because then writing feels strange - I feel like I have to reinvent the wheel. There are poets who don't have to do that.
Most reckless things are beautiful in some way, and recklessness is what makes experimental art beautiful, just as religions are beautiful because of the strong possibilities that they are founded on nothing.
Love was as subtly caught, as a disease; But being got it is a treasure sweet, which to defend is harder than to get: And ought not be profaned on either part, for though 'Tis got by chance, 'Tis kept by art.
As when the dove returning bore the mark Of earth restored to the long labouring ark; The relics of mankind, secure at rest, Oped every window to receive the guest, And the fair bearer of the message bless'd.
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, Far from the fiery noon and eve's one star, Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone, Still as the silence round about his lair.
Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand; For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mast'ry.
I enjoy meditation. I think the artist's position is often to mend the things we feel are broken. Whether that's between two cultures or two thoughts. We're always trying to reach, trying to expand something.
Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.
Am I a harp that the hand of the mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?
Learning can be a bridge between doing and thinking. But then there is a danger that the person who uses learning as a bridge between doing and thinking may get stuck in learning and never get on to thinking.
Putting facts by the thousands, into the world, the toes take off with an appealing squeak which the thumping heel follows confidentially, the way men greet men. Sometimes walking is just such elated pumping.
I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do. It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem.
The responsible treatment of this particular Ring of Power is not necessarily to toss it into the Cracks of Doom. But we have to come up with something rather quickly, or what we'll get is the Land of Mordor.
In the way that I experience life, the physical world is really just the tip of the iceberg of reality. Whether it's trees or stones or water or animals or stars, everything has an ineffable interior quality.
War rages on the teeming earth; The hot and sanguinary fight Begins with each new creature's birth: A dreadful war where might is right; Where still the strongest slay and win, Where weakness is the only sin.
Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we, Light half-believers in our casual deeds . . . Who hesitate and falter life away, And lose tomorrow the ground won today- Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?
I have a vast 'bone pile' of stillborn or abandoned poems along with jottings and wisps from the great beyond that I tend to scan. Sometimes that leads somewhere, and sometimes the Muse is just on sabbatical.
I don't really go with the crowd. I'm the kind of person that if I heard some girls were bullying my friend in another school, I would go to that school by myself and try to have a fight with a hundred girls.
The most beautiful sea hasn't been crossed yet. The most beautiful child hasn't grown up yet. The most beautiful days we haven't seen yet. And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you I haven't said yet.
Our judgment and moral categories, our idea of the future, our opinions about the present or about justice, peace, or war, everything, without excluding our rejections of Marxism, is impregnated with Marxism.
To some extent, I have only lived to have something to outlive. By confiding these futile remembrances to paper, I am conscious of accomplishing the most important act of my life. I was predestined to Memory.
My young love said to me,'My brothers won't mind, And my parents won't slight you for your lack of kind.' Then she stepped away from me, and this she did say, 'It will not be long, love, till our wedding day.
Their errors have been weighed and found to have been dust in the balance; if their sins were as scarlet, they are now white as snow: they have been washed in the blood of the mediator and the redeemer, Time.
You have to follow where the poem leads. And it will surprise you. It will say things you didn't expect to say. And you look at the poem and you realize, 'That is truly what I felt.' That is truly what I saw.
Plato found fault that the poets of his time filled the world with wrong opinions of the gods, making light tales of that unspotted essence, and therefore would not have the youth depraved with such opinions.
Do continue to believe that with your feeling and with your work you are taking part in the greatest; the more strongly you cultivate in yourself this belief, the more will reality and world go forth from it.
Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made. Our times are in his hand who saith, 'A whole I planned, youth shows but half; Trust God: See all, nor be afraid!
For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.
If I were a young man With my bones full of marrow, Oh, if I were a bold young man Straight as an arrow, I'd store up no virtue For Heaven's distant plain, I'd live at ease as I did please And sin once again.
The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem."
Those who are pure in heart achieve God-consciousness; they are truly and actually aware of God at the center of their being (their heart). These sanctified individuals are said to be Possessors of the Heart.
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.
Creation rather than painting, or if painting, yet such, and with such co-presence of the whole picture flash'd at once upon the eye, as the sun paints in a camera obscura. (Describing his poetic ideal, 1817)
If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting.
why can't you see i'm a kid', said the kid. Why try to make me like you? Why are you hurt when I don't cuddle? Why do you sigh when I splash through a puddle? Why do you scream when I do what I did? Im a kid.
She told me that every other step was just for me.' But that's only half of the dance,' I said. Yeah,' my father said. 'She was keeping the rest for herself. Nobody can give everything away. It ain't healthy.
all tamed animals are nervous, we have given them reason to be, not only by cruelty but by our love too, that presses upon them. They have not been able to be entirely indifferent to this and untouched by it.
See the cat at love, rolling with its sweetheart, up and over, with shriek and moan. But if a person comes by, they break away, sit separate upon a fence washing their faces - and might never have met at all.
He could not stand. It was not That he could not thrive, he was born With everything but the will – That can be deformed, just like a limb. Death was more interesting to him. Life could not get his attention.
When a poem is really finished, you can't change anything. You can't move words around. You can't say, 'In other words, you mean.' No, that's not it. There are no other words in which you mean it. This is it.
Beauty is momentary in the mind -- The fitful tracing of a portal; But in the flesh it is immortal. The body dies; the body's beauty lives. So evenings die, in their green going, A wave, interminably flowing.
My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands, I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them
The gulfing whale was like a dot in the spell. Yet look upon it, and 'twould size and swell To its huge self, and the minutest fish Would pass the very hardest gazer's wish, And show his little eye's anatomy.
When Walt Whitman writes in seeming defiance of tradition, he needs tradition for his protection, for the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker grow merry over him when they meet his work by chance.
Oh, river! darkling river! what a voice Is that thou utterest while all else is still-- The ancient voice that, centuries ago, Sounded between thy hills, while Rome was yet A weedy solitude by Tiber's stream!
I, measuring his affections by my own, Which then most sought where most might not be found, Being one too many by my weary self, Pursued my humor not pursuing his, And gladly shunned who gladly fled from me.
He hath disgrac'd me and hind'red me half a million; laugh'd at my losses, mock'd at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies. And what's his reason? I am a Jew.