Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Night comes, world-jewelled, . . . The stars rush forth in myriads as to wage War with the lines of Darkness; and the moon, Pale ghost of Night, comes haunting the cold earth After the sun's red sea-death--quietless.
Understand, I'll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks. I'll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows with only this one dream: You come too.
It’s possible, I’m moving through the hard veins of heavy mountains, like an arc, alone; I’m so deep inside, I see no end in sight, and no distance: everything is getting near and everything near is turning to stone.
You give me the feeling that the universe Was made by something more than human For something less than human. But I identify myself, as always, With something that there's something wrong with, With something human.
Even now, after whatever gains feminism has made in involving fathers in the rearing of their children, I still think virtually all of us spend the most formative years of our lives very much in the presence of women
The song Of Heaven is ever new; for daily thus, And nightly, new discoveries are made Of God's unbounded wisdom, power, and love, Which give the understanding larger room, And swell the hymn with ever-growing praise.
Self government is our right, a thing born to us at birth a thing no more to be doled out to us by another people then the right to life itself then the right to feel the sun or smell the flowers or to love our kind.
If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower I will pitch my tent in your shadow. Only your presence revives my withered heart. You are the candle that lights the whole world and I am an empty vessel for your light.
I am your moon and your moonlight too I am your flower garden and your water too I have come all this way, eager for you Without shoes or shawl I want you to laugh To kill all your worries To love you To nourish you.
To become spiritual, you must die to self, and come alive in the Lord. Only then will the mysteries of God fall from your lips. To die to self through self-discipline causes suffering but brings you everlasting life.
We began as mineral. We emerged into plant life, and into the animal state, and then into being human, and always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring when we slightly recall being green again.
When you are with everyone but me, you're with no one. When you are with no one but me, you're with everyone. Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone. When you become that many, you're nothing. Empty.
Oh to be free of myself, With nothing left to remember, To have my heart as bare As a tree in December; Resting, as a tree rests After its leaves are gone, Waiting no more for a rain at night Nor for the red at dawn.
Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably right but compellingly wise, not only a surprising variation played upon the world, but a re-tuning of the world itself.
Every poet I know - although there may be some I don't know who lead very different lives, who maybe live in the country and don't teach - tends to be just like the rest of us: just really busy, really overcommitted.
I wanted to get to that aesthetic proposition that comes out of learning the human elements of a world, so that those notes and rhythms mean something to you besides just the academic way in which they fall in place.
Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.
I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us.
If you chance to live in a town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty of the streets of Portsmouth.
I speak only of myself since I do not wish to convince, I have no right to drag others into my river, I oblige no one to follow me and everybody practices his art in his own way." - Tristan Tzara "Dada Manifesto 1918
Astronomy, that micography of heaven, is the most magnificent of the sciences. ... Astronomy has its clear side and its luminous side; on its clear side it is tinctured with algebra, on its luminous side with poetry.
We were determined to be in the fashion, and to visit the various delightful watering places on Long Island Sound. Of course, it would be necessary to combine business with pleasure and pursue our calling as beggars.
Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread.
Because of something told under the famished horn Of the hunter's moon, that hung between the night and the day, To dream of women whose beauty was folded in dismay, Even in an old story, is a burden not to be borne.
One should say before sleeping: I have lived many lives. I have been a slave and a prince. Many a beloved has sat upon my knee and I have sat upon the knees of many a beloved. Everything that has been shall be again.
Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.
Outside, the north wind, coming and passing, swelling and dying, lifts the frozen sand drives it a-rattle against the lidless windows and we may dear sit stroking the cat stroking the cat and smiling sleepily, prrrr.
I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among the creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of kindness and compassion.
I do beseech you- Though I perchance am vicious in my guess , that your wisdom yet From one that so imperfectly conjects Would take no notice, nor build yourself a trouble Out of his scattering and unsure observance.
Since I do purpose to marry, I will think nothing to any purpose that the world can say against it; and therefore never floutat me for what I have said against it; for man is a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion.
Nor stony tower, nor walls of beaten brass, Nor airless dungeon, nor strong links of iron, Can be retentive to the strength of spirit; But life, being weary of these worldly bars, Never lacks power to dismiss itself.
Ah, what a warning for a thoughtless man, Could field or grove, could any spot of earth, Show to his eye an image of the pangs Which it hath witnessed,-render back an echo Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod!
When we feel sad, all we need to do is to count our blessings, no matter how few we notice, so we can feel grateful for what we have been given. Sadness soon disappears and, in return, we get inspired to bless others.
Every one interprets everything in terms of his own experience. If you say anything which does not touch a precisely similar spot in another man's brain, he either misunderstands you, or doesn't understand you at all.
Shall the hag Evil die with the child of Good, Or propagate again her loathèd kind, Thronging the cells of the diseased mind, Hateful with hanging cheeks, a withered brood, Though hourly pastured on the salient blood?
The awakenings of remorse, virtuous shame and indignation, the glow of moral approbation if they do not lead to action, grow less and less vivid every time they occur, till at length the mind grows absolutely callous.
It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.
That no one, no one at all, should try to search into himself! But the wallet of the person in front is carefully kept in view. [Lat., Ut nemo in sese tentat descendere, nemo! Sed praecedenti spectatur mantica tergo.]
As I toiled up the Mount of Olives, in the very footsteps of Christ, panting with the heat and the difficult ascent, I found it utterly impossible to conceive that the Deity, in human form, had walked there before me.
I can't picture myself starting out aiming to do anything or having much of an agenda.I think in writing a poem, I'm making some tonal adjustments, and it took me a long time to allow anything like fun into my poetry.
More often than not in poetry I find difficulty to be gratuitous and show-offy and camouflaging, experimental to a kind of insane degree - a difficulty which really ignores the possibility of having a sensible reader.
I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
As for techniques and processes, as seen in the works themselves, neither public nor artists will find anything about them here. Those things are learned in the studio and the public is interested only in the results.
And sometimes I remember days of old When fellowship seemed not so far to seek, And all the world and I seemed much less cold, And at the rainbow's foot lay surely gold, And hope felt strong, and life itself not weak.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live My very life again though cold in death; Come back to me in dreams, that I may give Pulse for pulse, breath for breath: Speak low, lean low, As long ago, my love, how long ago
Poetry challenges you. Much of its importance is that it's one of the few places left in culture that makes things difficult-it asks you to think, to perceive and not to take for granted what we think about the world.
There are many tough conversations, but one of the most difficult is between a parent and an adolescent daughter, partly because as a parent we are almost always attempting to relate to someone who is no longer there.
our nerve filaments twitch with its presence day and night, nothing we say has not the husky phlegm of it in the saying, nothing we do has the quickness, the sureness, the deep intelligence living at peace would have.
Emily Dickinson calls previous poets her kinsmen of the shelf. You can always be consoled by your kinsmen of the shelf and you can participate in poetry by going to them and by trying to make something worthy of them.
You can seek clarity, you can seek warmth, you can try to make something for lasting. You can pack something in salt so that it's well made and you can hope that it outlasts time. But, ultimately that's not up to you.