Quotes by Poets - Page 388

I wish to weepbut sorrow isstupid.I wish to believebut belief is agraveyard.

Many people pretend to be in thought, proving thought to be a beautiful thing. But the bald man doesn’t need a comb, the tiger doesn’t need weapons, the fool doesn’t need thought. The person with no needs is practically a sage, but the sage also needs to count the rivers across the iron bridge to pass the time. This is the difference between the sage and the fool.

Decide the type of person you want to be, and when others aren’t looking, unique up on them.

That which costs little is less valued.

Man is more noble dead than alive, because in returning to the earth he becomes earth, and nothing is nobler than the earth that entombs us, closes our eyes, and blossoms in a beautiful eterneity.

It’s not really outstanding when you’re standing outOutcry is the only outburst,if you can’t shout

Seed Leaves Homage to R. F. Here something stubborn comes,Dislodging the earth crumbsAnd making crusty rubble.it comes up bending double,And looks like a green staple.It could be seedling maple,Or artichoke, or bean.That remains to be seen.Forced to make choice of ends,The stalk in time unbends,Shakes off the seed-case, heavesAloft, and spreads two leavesWhich still display no sureAnd special signature.Toothless and fat, they keepThe oval form of sleep.This plant would like to growAnd yet be embryo;In crease, and yet escapeThe doom of taking shape;Be vaguely vast, and climbTo the tip end of timeWith all of space to fill,Like boundless IgdrasilThat has the stars for fruit.But something at the rootMore urgent that the urgeBids two true leaves emerge;And now the plant, resignedTo being self-definedBefore it can commerceWith the great universe,Takes aim at all the skyAnd starts to ramify.

And now we step to the rhythm of miracles.--from The Light, That Never Dies

Hide nothing, for time, which sees all and hears all, exposes all.

A closed book will lie there like a dead horse. But an open book will kick, buck, and bolt through perceived adventures like a wild and free stallion. So hold on.

Through words to the meaning of thoughts with no words.

The whole purpose of the construction of The Bridge of Silver Wings was to provide a path leading to The River of Winged Dreams, or to serve as a resting place until the river’s deeper and truer nature revealed itself.

Dig anywhere in the earth and you will find a treasure, only you must dig with the faith of a peasant.

How many minutes will still die in the swamp of your illusion of being human?

I should like my house to be similar to that of the ocean wind, all quivering with gulls.

A simple child. That lightly draws its breath. And feels its life in every limb. What should it know of death?

So he was always in the town at one place or another, drinking, knocking about with the men he knew. It really wearied him. He talked to barmaids, to almost any woman, but there was that dark, strained look in his eyes, as if he were hunting something.Everything seemed so different, so unreal. There seemed no reason why people should go along the street, and houses pile up in the daylight. There seemed no reason why these things should occupy the space, instead of leaving it empty. His friends talked to him: he heard the sounds, and he answered. But why there should be the noise of speech he could not understand.

They who await no gifts from chance have conquered fate.

Her dark hair was scattered and its beauty stung his eyes like smoke and ate into his heart.

The devil's happy when the critics run you off.

If lighthouse becomes a burning candle, flickered upon ocean's insanity.Your sailing heart there anchors to handle the obsessed breeze towards sand dune's vanity.

I have daughters and I have sons.When one of them lays a handOn my shoulder, shining fishTurn suddenly in the deep sea.

Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.

Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.This step forward (at first right against the will of the men who are left behind) will transform the experience of love, which is now full of error, alter its root and branch, reshape it into a relation between two human beings and no longer between man and woman. And this more human form of love (which will be performed in infinitely gentle and considerate fashion, true and clear in its creating of bonds and dissolving of them) will resemble the one we are struggling and toiling to prepare the way for, the love that consists in two solitudes protecting, defining and welcoming one another.

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

OK," she said. "Let's try. But remember one thing. You're going to lose interest. At some point, it will happen. You don't think so now, but you'll get distracted. You have to stay with me. If we have a family together, you have to be here to help.

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.

The young man knows the rules but the old man knows the exceptions.

Science is nothing but developed perception interpreted intent common sense rounded out and minutely articulated.

See this abdicated beast, once kingOf them all, nibble his claws:Not anger enough left—no, nor despair—To break his teeth on the bars.

We are a singularity that makes music out of noise because we must hurry. We make a harvest of loneliness and desiring in the blank wasteland of the cosmos.

The self can watch itself becoming lazy, or non-watchful; this is an asset that can make both for humor and profound well-being.

Independence may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance I mean where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.

A heart in love is a thriller book of many stories

Shake off this downy sleep, death’s counterfeit,And look on death itself!

If Ford Madox Ford were placed stark naked in a room totally empty he would contrive to turn it into a mess.

Learning is my sole delight.

Prayer:  The act of falling to your knees in pleading fashion, seeking help from a greater power than all else to have failed you previously.

We must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. It's trying on a man, I know. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. But there's no help for it till we know our men. Lay to, and whistle for a wind, that's my view.

Trees exhale for us so that we can inhale them to stay alive. Can we ever forget that? Let us love trees with every breath we take until we perish

With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair.

How poor are they that have not patience? What wound did ever heal but by degrees?

You cannot judge a man by his smile, but you can judge a man by his heart. The smallest actions reveal the most about a heart's true color, so pay attention to them. Actions are the true words of the heart.

POLONIUS My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently.HAMLET Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?POLONIUS By th'mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed.HAMLET Methinks it is like a weasel.POLONIUS It is backed like a weasel.HAMLET Or like a whale?POLONIUS Very like a whale.HAMLET Then I will come to my mother by and by. - They fool me to the top of my bent. - I will come by and by.

The Marquess shrugged. “I’m a shadow. I do know I am a shadow, Iago. I know most of the time. It’s only when I cannot bear how everyone looks at me down here that I make myself forget it. Shadows are the other side of yourself. I had longings to be good, even then. I was just stronger than my wanting. I’m stronger than anything, really, when I want to be.” The Marquess’s hair turned white as the snow. “Do you know, we’re right underneath Springtime Parish? This place is the opposite of springtime. Everything past prime, boarded up for the season. Just above us, the light shines golden on daffodils full of rainwine and heartgrass and a terrible, wicked, sad girl I can’t get back to. I don’t even know if I want to. Do I want to be her again? Or do I want to be free? I come here to think about that. To be near her and consider it. I think I shall never be free. I think I traded my freedom for a better story. It was a better story, even if the ending needed work.

Most men—it is my experience—are neither virtuous nor scoundrels, good-hearted nor bad-hearted. They are a little of one thing and a little of the other and nothing for any length of time: ignoble mediocrities.

Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace'One grand boulevard with treeswith one grand cafe in sunwith strong black coffee in very small cups.One not necessarily very beautifulman or woman who loves you.One fine day.

In creating the only hard thing's to begin A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak.

The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

That fire you see can't last. Still, as it burns, it lights everything.

Love. And again, see I don't mean, I think love is that condition in the human spirit so profund, that it allows us to forgive, and it may be the energy which keeps the stars in the firmament, I'm not sure. It may be the energy which keeps the blood running smoothly through our veins. I'm not sure, but it's something beyond the explanation. It can be used for anything you can explain. Any good thing you can explain.

One more drink and I'd have been under the host.

When I was with him suddenly I wasn’t this broken person anymore.I was just me.I was whole again.I was just a person – like everyone else.

Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.

Poetry is the wailing of a broken heart―the etched sorrows of despairing souls.  These artful words are an exclamation in rare colors expressed noiselessly on parchment.  Poetry is the unheard cry of a flower, wilting.  It is a humble, lucent tear shed with meaning.  It is the lovely portrayal of ugliness and the bitter edge of sweet.  Poetry speaks to the spirit by piercing understanding. It interprets all senseless truths―beauty, love, emotion―into sensible scrawl.  Poetry is vague affirmation and bewildering clarification. Like the most poignant of emotions, we understand the essence but cannot adequately do it verbal justice, crippled by inherently weak tongues.  A spiritual soothsayer, poetry is the closest thing to expression of feelings unutterable.

You cannot run away from a weakness. You must sometimes fight it out or perish and if that be so why not now and where you stand?

None but yourself who are your greatest foe.

Will be but corpses dressed in frocks, who cannot speak to birds or rocks.

I suppose you think you know what autumn looks like. Even if you live in the Los Angeles dreamed of by September’s schoolmates, you have surely seen postcards and photographs of the kind of autumn I mean. The trees go all red and blazing orange and gold, and wood fires burn at night so everything smells of crisp branches. The world rolls about delightedly in a heap of cider and candy and apples and pumpkins and cold stars rush by through wispy, ragged clouds, past a moon like a bony knee. You have, no doubt, experienced a Halloween or two.tAutumn in Fairyland is all that, of course. You would never feel cheated by the colors of a Fairyland Forest or the morbidity of a Fairyland moon. And the Halloween masks! Oh, how they glitter, how they curl, how their beaks and jaws hook and barb! But to wander through autumn in Fairyland is to look into a murky pool, seeing only a hazy reflection of the Autumn Provinces’ eternal fall. And human autumn is but a cast-off photograph of that reflecting pool, half burnt and drifting through the space between us and Fairyland.tAnd so I may tell you that the leaves began to turn red as September and her friends rushed through the suddenly cold air on their snorting, roaring high wheels, and you might believe me. But no red you have ever seen could touch the crimson bleed of the trees in that place. No oak gnarled and orange with October is half as bright as the boughs that bent over September’s head, dropping their hard, sweet acorns into her spinning spokes. But you must try as hard as you can. Squeeze your eyes closed, as tight as you can, and think of all your favorite autumns, crisp and perfect, all bound up together like a stack of cards. That is what it is like, the awful, wonderful brightness of Fairy colors. Try to smell the hard, pale wood sending up sharp, green smoke into the afternoon. To feel to mellow, golden sun on your skin, more gentle and cozier and more golden than even the light of your favorite reading nook at the close of the day.

We all know what Parliament is, and we are all ashamed of it.