Quotes by Poets - Page 370

So the paradox goes: No man who is really ignorant is ever aware that he is ignorant. That is its finest, most faulty manifestation; there can be no true ignorance without first some claim of intelligence or consciousness, or superiority or enlightenment.
Criss Jami
Although personal calling I sense,Who am I? even if I am, I don't know.
Dejan Stojanovic
Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep.
Robert Louis Stevenson
If you cannot hold me in your arms, then hold my memory in high regard.And if I cannot be in your life, then at least let me live in your heart.
Ranata Suzuki
Every once in a while I don't think it's a bad idea for lawyers to remember that what goes on, at least on some level of our brains, is that we have to imagine everything coming apart. ... It's what we are. Out of control, always prepared, Boy Scout control freaks.
Lawrence Joseph
Fixed stars govern a life
Sylvia Plath
It is always betterto avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.For every one of us, living in this worldmeans waiting for our end. Let whoever canwin glory before death. When a warrior is gone,that will be his best and only bulwark.
Seamus Heaney
Words of affection howsoe'er expressed The latest spoken still are deem'd the best.
Joanna Baillie
For, he (The Devil) observed, the issue of the great battle of Good and Evil had been otherwise settled, as he would presently show him. "It wants but a few moments of night," he continued, "and over this interval of twilight, as you know, I have been given complete control. Look to the West.("The Legend of Monte Del Diablo")
Bret Harte
But bid life seize the present? It lives less in the present Than in the future always, And less in both together Than in the past. The present Is too much for the senses, Too crowding, too confusing— Too present to imagine.
Robert Frost
One learns by doing the thing for though you think you know it you have no certainty until you try.
Sophocles
You must know, my own love, that in each element there exists a race of beings, whose form scarcely differs from yours, but who very seldom appear to mortal sight … you now see before you, my love, an undine.
Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué
People who know their worth understand the power of their own words.
Gift Gugu Mona
It’s not magic. I remember because I make comparisons. Not in terms of better or worse, just different. And not all of these memories are great, but they’re mine.Which lends way to believe, that none of our lives are put together on an assembly line. We’re not pre-packaged with memories or programmed with stories. We have to make our own.
Shane L. Koyczan
A cynical modification of letting go doesn't bring forgiveness, it's when, once you forgive, will you be able to let go.
Anthony Liccione
We live in a world where you can be put to death for your belief and shows how humanity judges in a dreadful motif.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
I love the people,' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.
Sylvia Plath
O holy Sunday, let your darkness not come along my way. Let her nurture internal and external world, as I start my personal day.
Santosh Kalwar
My double drags his coffin, humble slave,I, at least, am real, though changed to flesh.Far-off, I build me a church no hand can shape("Winter Sonnets: III")
Vyacheslav Ivanov
When we walk in the sunour shadows are like barges of silence.
Mark Strand
Aegean Islands 1940-41Where white stares, smokes or breaks,Thread white, white of plaster and of foam,Where sea like a wall falls;Ribbed, lionish coast,The stony islands which blow into my mindMore often than I imagine my grassy home;To sun one's bones beside theExplosive, crushed-blue, nostril-opening sea(The weaving sea, splintered with sails and foam,Familiar of famous and deserted harbours,Of coins with dolphins on and fallen pillars.)To know the gear and skill of sailing,The drenching race for home and the sail-white houses,Stories of Turks and smoky ikons,Cry of the bagpipe, treadingOf the peasant dancers;The dark breadThe island wine and the sweet dishes;All these were elements in a happinessMore distant now than any date like '40,A. D. or B. C., ever can express.
Bernard Spencer
Doubt wisely; in strange wayTo stand inquiring right, is not to stray;To sleep, or run wrong, is.
John Donne
I am that which unloves me and loves; I am stricken, and I am the blow.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Men in rage strike those that wish them best.
William Shakespeare
If emptiness is empty, how can something be borne or awaken from it?
Dejan Stojanovic
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wantedTo lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free——The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.
Sylvia Plath
Someone can be madly in love with you and still not be ready. They can love you in a way you have never been loved and still not join you on the bridge. And whatever their reasons you must leave. Because you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready.
Nayyirah Waheed
There are other things to a woman than taking her to bed.
Kingsley Amis
Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.
Bertolt Brecht
...and when we die we die alone I cry, I cry aloneLike a piece of stone I am thrown into the wavy ocean of lifeto atone...to atoneOnly to atone...
Munia Khan
IT'S NOT THE HONEY WHISKEY IN A FRIDAY NIGHT - IT'S THE MANIC SHOW OF POETRY TWEETS THAT TURNS ME ON.
Amy King
A Wyvern’s body is different from the body of a young girl in several major respects. First, it has wings, which most young girls do not (there are exceptions). Second, it has a very long, thick tail, which some young girls may have, but those who find themselves so lucky keep them well hidden. Let us just say, there is a reason some ladies wore bustles in times gone by! Third, it weighs about as much as a tugboat carrying several horses and at least one boulder. There are girls who weigh that much, but as a rule, they are likely to be frost giants. Do not trouble such folk with asking after the time or why their shoes do not fit so well.
Catherynne M. Valente
You may make love in dancing as well as sitting.
Aphra Behn
The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth and to have it found out by accident.
Charles Lamb
I have been looking at the marriage service in the Prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don’t choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal.
Thomas Hardy
Stars are cracks of light for night than pierces the heart. (Étoiles sont fissures de lumière - De la nuit que transperce le cœur.)
Charles de Leusse
I stood like Adam in his lonely gardenOn that first morning, shaken out of sleep,Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.
Mary Oliver
Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Flowers of all hue and without thorn the rose.
John Milton
He asked, "What makes a man a writer?" "Well," I said, "it's simple. You either get it down on paper, or jump off a bridge.
Charles Bukowski
I thank You God for this most amazing day for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.
E.E. Cummings
It’s an already inside outside,The philosophers say it’s the soulBut it’s not the soul: it’s the animal or the man itselfIn its way of existing.
Alberto Caeiro
A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.
Jorge Luis Borges
Born from sea foam; high up to the tops of the waves, on the trail of love.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
I have rubbed, knocked and brushed up against a thousand windows, trying to get an image.
Anthony Liccione
Society is now one polished horde Formed of two mighty tribes The Bores and the Bored.
Lord Byron
No one and nothing outside of you can give you salvation, or free you from the misery. You have to light your own lamp. You have to know the miniature universe that you yourself are.
Banani Ray
The mere ambition to write a poem is enough to kill it.
Henri Michaux
Any system that values profit over human life is a very dangerous one indeed.
Suzy Kassem
Everything is boring, boredom is the other epidemic which is making Europe ripe for decline. Boredom is the end product of each and every civilization. It is the arteriosclerosis of the great thinking peoples. The moment always arrives where even God, whether he’s called Zeus, Zebaoth or Zoroaster, has finished creating the universe and asks: “What’s the point of it, actually?” He yawns and chucks it aside. Mankind does the same with civilization. Boredom is the condition of a people which no longer believes but all the same is doing just fine. Boredom is when every clock in the country is predestined to be correct. When the same naive flowers blossom again in the month of March. When every day the deaths of good family fathers are announced in the papers. When a war breaks out in the Balkans. When poems go on about the stars. Boredom is a symptom of aging. Boredom is the diagnosis that talent and virtue are slowly being spent. Boredom is the life-long determination to a form of being which has worn itself out.
Iwan Goll
Lord, may the pain be ours, And the weakness that it brings, But at least give us the strength, Of not showing it to anyone!
Fernando Pessoa
It was raining that night, when we kissed for the first time.
Avijeet Das
Truth exists for the wise, beauty for the feeling heart.
Friedrich Schiller
Why should I blame her that she filled my daysWith misery, or that she would of late Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,Or hurled the little streets upon the great, Had they but courage equal to desire?What could have made her peaceful with a mindThat nobleness made simple as a fire,With beauty like a tightened bow, a kindThat is not natural in an age like thisBeing high and solitary and most stern?Why, what could she have done, being what she is?Was there another Troy for her to burn?
W.B. Yeats
If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.
Charles Bukowski
Rain on your body burned my heart. (Pluie sur ton corps - Brûla mon coeur.)
Charles de Leusse
Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.
William Shakespeare
Deep the waves may be and cold, But Jehovah is our refuge, And His promise is our hold; For the Lord Himself hath said it, He, the faithful God and true: "When thou comest to the waters Thou shalt not go down, BUT THROUGH." Seas of sorrow, seas of trial, Bitterest anguish, fiercest pain, Rolling surges of temptation Sweeping over heart and brain They shall never overflow us For we know His word is true; All His waves and all His billows He will lead us safely through. Threatening breakers of destruction, Doubt's insidious undertow, Shall not sink us, shall not drag us Out to ocean depths of woe; For His promise shall sustain us, Praise the Lord, whose Word is true! We shall not go down, or under, For He saith, "Thou passest THROUGH
Annie Johnson Flint
Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling's] peers were socialists.
Jorge Luis Borges
A peevish self-willed harlotry it is.*She’s a stubborn little brat.*
William Shakespeare