Quotes by Poets - Page 239

Poetry is a will to put things right, an imaginary solution, a way of avoiding a catastrophe that already happened. Poetry is an escape, perhaps intelligent, perhaps idiotic, from a senile situation. It is a dialectical movement, it keeps tearing open the wounds while trying to heal them. Here we see the only acceptable path open up towards an existence worthy of human beings. Here the seriousness is unfaltering and absolute. Where it will lead no one knows.
Aase Berg
There is a secret medicine given only to those who hurt so hard they can't hope.The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Jalaluddin Rumi
O bed! O bed! Delicious bed! That heaven on earth to the weary head!
Thomas Hood
It is easier to suppose that the universe has existed from all eternity than to conceive a Being beyond its limits capable of creating it.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
The more haste the less speed.
John Heywood
Animals had returned to what was left of the forest...clusters of orange butterflies exploded off the blackish purple piles of bear sign and winked and fluttered magically like leaves without trees. More bears than people traveled the muddy road, leaving tracks straight up and down the middle of it...
Denis Johnson
When all is lost, there is still a memory.
Dejan Stojanovic
He reads much;He is a great observer and he looksQuite through the deeds of men: he loves no plays,As thou dost, Antony; he hears no music;Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sortAs if he mock'd himself and scorn'd his spiritThat could be moved to smile at any thing.Such men as he be never at heart's easeWhiles they behold a greater than themselves,And therefore are they very dangerous.
William Shakespeare
Ceux qui revent eveilles ont conscience de 1000 choses qui echapent a ceux qui ne revent qu'endormis.The one who has day dream are aware of 1000 things that the one who dreams only when he sleeps will never understand.(it sounds better in french, I do what I can with my translation...)
Edgar Allan Poe
No, I mean really listen. Here's a story, and you don't have to visit manyhouses to find it. One person is talking,the other one is not really listening.someone can look like they are but they'reactually thinking about something they want to say, or their minds are justwandering. Or they're looking at thatlittle box people hold in their hands thesedays. And people get discouraged, so theyquit trying. And the very quiet people,you may have noticed, are often the sadpeople.
Mary Oliver
I feel as though whenever I create something, my Mr. Hyde wakes up in the middle of the night and starts thrashing it. I sometimes love it the next morning, but other times it is an abomination.
Criss Jami
To acquire the full consciousness of self is to know oneself so different from others that no longer feels allied with men except by purely animal contacts: nevertheless, among souls of this degree, there is an ideal fraternity based on differences,--while society fraternity is based on resemblances.The full consciousness of self can be called originality of soul, -and all this is said only to point out the group of rare beings to which Andre Gide belongs.The misfortune of these beings, when they express themselves, is that they do it with such odd gestures that men fear to approach them; their life of social contacts must often revolve in the brief circle of ideal fraternities; or, when the mob consents to admit such souls, it is as curiosities or museum objects. Their glory is, finally, to be loved from afar & almost understood, as parchments are seen & read above sealed cases.
Rémy de Gourmont
Go to God with your coal, and He will set them to blazing fire.
Anthony Liccione
The viola and the clarinet made for an interesting pairing: we had to imagine the accompaniment of other instruments, ideally a violin and a cello.
Nicholas Christopher
When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself.
Tao Lin
Is my victory real, does the winner adorned with a laurel wreath ask this question? Do I deserve victory or did I steal it from someone who is more worthy of victory?
Dejan Stojanovic
All night my heart makes its wayhowever it can over the rough groundof uncertainties, but only until nightmeets and then is overwhelmed bymorning, the light deepening, thewind easing and just waiting, as Itoo wait (and when have I ever beendisappointed?) for redbird to sing
Mary Oliver
Most persons have died before they expired - died to all earthly longings so that the last breath is only as it were the locking of the door of the already deserted mansion.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common ground, has crumbled into dust and has been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganization of the whole of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined. All that's left is the bare, shivering human soul, stripped to the last shred, the naked force of the human psyche for which nothing has changed because it was always cold and shivering and reaching out to its nearest neighbor, as cold and lonely as itself.
Boris Pasternak
Am I shallow? she asks the mirror. Yes, I am shallow. The sun shines on the ripples where it's shallow. Deep is too dark.
Margaret Atwood
Thou hast seen nothing yet.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Outside the youth center, between the liquor storeand the police station,a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;overflowing with blossomfoam,like a sudsy mug of beer;like a bride ripping off her clothes,dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.It’s been doing that all week:making beauty,and throwing it away,and making more.
Tony Hoagland
Looking at old photographs inundates you with a flood of nostalgic emotions! And you can't be sure where you want to swim in the deluge of memories!
Avijeet Das
Friends Romans countrymen lend me your ears.
William Shakespeare
Praise the sea but keep on land.
George Herbert
Anguish is the universal language
Alice Fulton
Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.
Erica Jong
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
Jack Kerouac
YOUNG MORTIMER:Thou proud disturber of thy country's peace,Corrupter of thy king, cause of these broils,Base flatterer, yield! and were it not for shame,Shame and dishonour to a soldier's name,Upon my weapon's point here should'st thou fall,And welter in thy gore.LANCASTER:Monster of men!That, like the Greekish strumpet, train'd to armsAnd bloody wars so many valiant knights;Look for no other fortune, wretch, than death!King Edward is not here to buckler thee.
Christopher Marlowe
We have conversations most nights, Sylvia Plath and me. On these cold wintry nights with our coffee mugs in hand, we talk for hours and hours, Sylvia Plath and me!
Avijeet Das
Khuda tujhe kisi toofaan se aashna karde,Ke tere behr ki maujon men iztiraab naheenMay God grant you a storm! The voyage of your life is on too placid an ocean…
Muhammad Iqbal
A man's world is different from a woman's world and a man's emotions are different from a woman's emotions and only marriage can bring the two different sets of emotions together properly.
Sylvia Plath
He that doth the ravens feed. Yea providently caters for the sparrow. Be comfort to my age!
William Shakespeare
Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness.
Criss Jami
Dante Alighieri wrote his first book in the prosimetrum genre – La Vita Nuova – in 14th century Florence. Since I’m compiling this collection – my first indie publication – in Florence, just blocks from Dante’s house, and since his book involves a lost love, and ‘A New Life,’ I thought it fitting to emulate this style in my own casual, intuitive fashion. My hope is that the juxtaposition of poems, journal entries, essays and prose will create a story; a memoir in anarchistic vignettes.
Jalina Mhyana
Nothing is really beautiful unless it is useless; everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and the needs of man are ignoble and disgusting, like his poor weak nature. The most useful place in a house is the lavatory.
Théophile Gautier
The king who has the broad bean does not have one whole wafer. (Le roi qui a la fève - N'a la galette entière.)
Charles de Leusse
For dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true
Robert Frost
that your power of commandwith simple language wasone of the magnificent things ofour century.(from the poem: result)
Charles Bukowski
The thought is just as strong as the consequence.
Anthony Liccione
The ninety and nine are with dreams, content, but the hope of the world made new, is the hundredth man who is grimly bent on making those dreams come true.
Edgar Allan Poe
In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still In men whom men pronounce divine I find so much of sin and blot I do not dare to draw a line Between the two where God has not.
Joaquin Miller
The greatest war every fought, and are still fighting, where more people have been defeated and died, is the war within.
Anthony Liccione
Listen, I'd rather lie naked in a plowed field under an incontinent horse for a week than have to read that paragraph again!
Diane Ackerman
We do not remember days we remember moments.
Cesare Pavese
Mantra: My swirling mind becomes peaceful, and my body releases all tension. I surrender to the love of the universe, which heals me totally.
Jay Woodman
Often we withhold our affections, waiting first for love to be extended to us. The irony is that we are loved for loving.
Richelle E. Goodrich
sometimes a man must fight so hard for life that he doesn't have time to live it.
Charles Bukowski
Healthy ChoicesHold stillKeep quiet.Get a degree to learn how to talksaying nothing.Catch a good manby being demure.the one your mother chooses.Let him climb youwhenever his urge,amidst headachesand menstrual achesand screaming infants.And when he bidsquick, turn over.Hold still.Make your tonguea slab of cementa white stone etchedwith your name.Kill your stories with knivesand knitting needlesand Clorox bleach.Hide in your mysteriousnessby saying nothing.Starch your thoughtswith ironed shirts.Tie your angerwith a knot inyour throatand when he comeswithout concernswallow it.Hold still.Keep desirehopeless as iceand sleepless nightsand painful as pinched eyelid.Keep your fingersfrom the razor,keep your longingto severhis condescensionsafely in your douchbag.Turn the bladeagainst yourself.Don't twitchas your slashed wristsstain your bathroom tiles.Disinfect with Pine Sol.Hold still. Keep quiet.Keep tight your lips,keep dead your dreams,keep cold your heart.Keep quiet.And he will shoutpraisesto yourperfection.
Janice Mirikitani
Underground, the stars are legend.
Catherine Fisher
In the end, I will have to make a choice about how to tell my story....There has to be a moment of going forward, when all the possibilities are left behind.
Helen Humphreys
To love thus is to love according to the soul; and there is no soul that does not respond to this love. For the soul of man is a guest that has gone hungry these centuries back, and never has it to be summoned twice to the nuptial feast.
Maurice Maeterlinck
One, who suicides, is itself a killer and itself a victim. To trigger that has its decision, and own willingness, no one else.
Ehsan Sehgal
Dreams and freedom are the same. In order for them to be, they come with a price.
Criss Jami
You may discover that the very aspects which make it most unendurable are what gives New York its meaning. Its inconsistencies and anonymity, its seeming indifference to you and every other individual is really what makes it a safe haven for individuals everywhere (Maeve Brennan)
Elizabeth Winder
He was everything I needed because his entire character had been molded by my deepest wants and desires. He was my rock when I cried, my playmate when I laughed, and my hero when I needed to imagine that one existed for me.
Richelle E. Goodrich
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fear attracts the darkness. When you have no fear, the darkness fears you.
Suzy Kassem
One night I dreamed of an angel: I walked into a huge, empty bar and saw him sitting in a corner with his elbows on the table and a cup of milky coffee in front of him. She’s the love of your life, he said, looking up at me, and the force of his gaze, the fire in his eyes, threw me right across the room. I started shouting, Waiter, waiter, then opened my eyes and escaped from that miserable dream. Other nights I didn’t dream of anyone, but I woke up in tears.
Roberto Bolaño
To get through the night, I sometimes imagined the sky filled with a canopy of stars. I imagined that each star contained the soul of a girl or boy who had died too young, and the light the stars gave off was their brightness.
Jill Bialosky