Quotes by Poets - Page 43

A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.
John Milton
Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate. Only on occasion--and fear considers this very important--does it want to know how things stand with me.
Herta Müller
[It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth.
George Oppen
Why should you want to give up a child's wise not-understanding in exchange for defensiveness and scorn, since not-understanding is, after all, a way of being alone, whereas defensiveness and scorn are a participation in precisely what, by these means, you want to separate yourself from.
Rainer Maria Rilke
He who has the courage to laugh is almost as much the master of the world as he who is ready to die.
Giacomo Leopardi
You forsake all that you hold dear,for a dream that is not your own;you would rather live a liethan live your life alone
Lang Leav
The untold want, by life and land ne'er granted,Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.
Walt Whitman
What remains to us here, behind the Yser, is not much more than a strip of land almost impossible to defend; a few rain-soaked trenches around razed villages; roads blown to smithereens, unusable by any vehicle; a creaky old horse cart we haul around ourselves, loaded with crates of damp ammunition that are constantly on the verge of sliding into a canal, forcing us to slog like madmen for every ten yards of progress as we stifle our warning cries; the snarling officers in the larger dug-outs, walled off with boards, where the privates have to bail water every day and brush the perpetual muck off their superiors’ boots; the endless crouching as we walk the trenches, grimy and smelly; our louse-ridden uniforms; our arseholes burning with irritation because we have no clean water for washing them after our regular attacks of diarrhoea; our stomach cramps as we crawl over heavy clods of earth like trolls in some gruesome fairy tale; the evening sun slanting down over the barren expanse; infected fingers torn by barbed wire; the startling memory of another, improbable life, when a thrush bursts into song in a mulberry bush or a spring breeze carries the smell of grassy fields from far behind the front line, and we throw ourselves flat on our bellies again as howitzers open fire out of nowhere, the crusts of bread in our hands falling into the sludge at the boot-mashed bottom of the stinking trench.
Stefan Hertmans
His face was neither handsome nor anything else. It just was.
Tarjei Vesaas
Each of us has the right and the responsibility to assess the roads which lie ahead, and those over which we have traveled, and if the future road looms ominous or unpromising, and the roads back uninviting, then we need to gather our resolve and, carrying only the necessary baggage, step off that road into another direction. If the new choice is also unpalatable, without embarrassment, we must be ready to change that as well.
Maya Angelou
Truth is, I’m generally happiest when it’s just me. It’s okay to be madly in love with yourself.
Richelle E. Goodrich
animals never worry about Heaven or Hell. neither do I. maybe that's why we get along
Charles Bukowski
And now we who are writing women and strange monstersStill search our hearts to find the difficult answers,Still hope that we may learn to lay our handsMore gently and more subtly on the burning sands.
May Sarton
My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!And yet they seem alive and quiveringAgainst my tremulous hands which loose the stringAnd let them drop down on my knee to-night.This said, -- he wished to have me in his sightOnce, as a friend: this fixed a day in springTo come and touch my hand ... a simple thing,Yet I wept for it! -- this, ... the paper's light ...Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailedAs if God's future thundered on my past.This said, I am thine -- and so its ink has paledWith lying at my heart that beat too fast.And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availedIf, what this said, I dared repeat at last!
Elizabeth Barrett-Browning
But undying memories stood like sentinels in her breast. When the notes of doves, calling to each other, fell on her ear, her eyes sought the sky, and she heard a voice saying, "Majella!
Helen Hunt Jackson
False humility is quite like the worst of both worlds: both that of Meekness and that of Conceit.
Criss Jami
If you want to be listened to you should put in time listening.
Marge Piercy
The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight, the weight we carry is love. Who can deny? In dreams it touches the body, in thought constructs a miracle, in imagination anguishes till born in human-- looks out of the heart burning with purity-- for the burden of life is love, but we carry the weight wearily, and so must rest in the arms of love at last, must rest in the arms of love. No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love-- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love --cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy --must give for no return as thought is given in solitude in all the excellence of its excess. The warm bodies shine together in the darkness, the hand moves to the center of the flesh, the skin trembles in happiness and the soul comes joyful to the eye-- yes, yes, that's what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born.
Allen Ginsberg
If you claim to be a real friend then be real in your soul. If you claim to be fake then be an enemy instead.
Santosh Kalwar
The happy man is he who knows his limitations yet bows to no false gods.
Robert Service
Be aware of the high notes, of the blissful faces and their soft messages, and listen for the silent message of a highly decorated gift.
Dejan Stojanovic
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
William Blake
I sent my Soul through the Invisible Some letter of that After-life to spell And by and by my Soul returned to me And answered "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."
Omar Khayyám
Into the dark night Resignedly I go, I am not so afraid of the dark night As the friends I do not know,I do not fear the night aboveAs I fear the friends below.
Stevie Smith
If you are good, they say you are weak.
Dejan Stojanovic
I must be cruel only to be kind;Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.
William Shakespeare
We don't fall in love with someone. We discover love in someone!
Avijeet Das
A true prophet would rather be believed false by many but actually true than believed true by many but actually false.
Criss Jami
I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold
Mahmoud Darwish
It takes patience to make a man - the patience to listen, watch and wait.
Ogwo David Emenike
now it’s computers and more computersand soon everybody will have one,3-year-olds will have computersand everybody will know everythingabout everybody elselong before they meet them.nobody will want to meet anybodyelse ever againand everybody will bea recluselike I am now.
Charles Bukowski
... in art nothing is more secondary than the author's intentions.
Jorge Luis Borges
The dream is not a drug but a way. Listen to where it can take you.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Little thorn in my soul, pebble in my shoe, jewel of my life, the passionate doll who has torn my heart in two, tell me, cruel beauty that I adore, why you torment me. I have the misfortune of being both poor and without your affection. When the hope of your caresses flowered in my soul, happiness blossomed in my tomorrows. But now that you have yanked my golden dreams from me, I shiver from this chalice of pain like a tender white flower tossed in rain. Return my life to me, and end this absurd pain. If not, Rogelio Velasco will have loved in vain.
Cisneros Sandra
Pray that the summer mornings are many when with such pleasure, with such joy you will enter ports seen for the first time
Constantinos P. Cavafis
Love conquers all.
Virgil
Women particularly should concern themselves with peace because men by nature are more foolhardy and headstrong, and their overwhelming desire to avenge themselves prevents them from foreseeing the resulting dangers and terrors of war. But woman by nature is more gentle and circumspect. Therefore, if she has sufficient will and wisdom she can provide the best possible means to pacify man.
Christine de Pizan
Being a dad is quite rewarding and even magical at times. It is our greatest chance to do something right in our lives that will keep making the world a brighter place even generations after we are gone.
Timothy Pina
Maybe to feel superior in struggle was sensed, When people were aware to fight for identity.'-Terzanelle for Octavia Estelle Butler, poem by Marieta Maglas
Marieta Maglas
When the tidal waves wildly behavingMy bare feet on the shore busy savingThe calm warmth leaking out of the sandTo let my heart feel peacefully tanned!
Munia Khan
We rehearse for the big death through the little death of orgasm, through erotic living. Death as transfiguration
Peter Redgrove
Always surround yourself with friends that have plenty of light in them. That way, you will always have candles around you when days are dark.
Suzy Kassem
One of the schools in Tlön has reached the point of denying time. It reasons that the present is undefined, that the future has no other reality than as present hope, that the past is no more than present memory.
Jorge Luis Borges
Whether it be to failure or success the first need of being is endurance -to endure with gladness if we can with fortitude in any event.
Bliss Carman
Genius is independent of situation.
Charles Churchill
Reason is also choice.
John Milton
When you're socially awkward, you're isolated more than usual, and when you're isolated more than usual, your creativity is less compromised by what has already been said and done. All your hope in life starts to depend on your craft, so you try to perfect it. One reason I stay isolated more than the average person is to keep my creativity as fierce as possible. Being the odd one out may have its temporary disadvantages, but more importantly, it has its permanent advantages.
Criss Jami
Funny how "question" contains the word "quest" inside it, as though any small question asked is a journey through briars.
Catherynne M. Valente
In general I strive for greatness and rational achievement, but I admit to you I’ve a terrible fondness for women, a tendency towards drunkenness, and a weakness for the fumes of the poppy—opium and other miserable beauties.
Roman Payne
I fuckin eat silence of crickets for fun. I got life afterlife and a name like Baby. Every time I try to cry a teara new kittenhead grows out of me.
Patricia Lockwood
I was going to be a memory when I grew up.
Alejandro Zambra
[A]fter all, what does it mean for pain to be 'memorable'? You're either in pain or you're not. And it isn't the pain that one forgets. It's the touching death part. As the baby might say to its mother, we might say to death: I forget you, but you remember me.
Maggie Nelson
Childhood memories surge back more vividly midway through life – like some palimpsest whose original text suddenly reappears after the manuscript has been chemically treated.
Gérard de Nerval
A bullet only costs about two cents, and anybody can afford that.
Sherman Alexie
Écoutez le monde blanchorriblement las de son effort immenseses articulations rebelles craquer sous les étoiles duresses raideurs d'acier bleu transperçant la chair mystiqueécoute ses victoires proditoires trompeter ses défaitesécoute aux alibis grandioses son piètre trébuchementPitié pour nos vainquers omniscients et naïfs !
Aimé Césaire
Character is a question of time. It lasts for a certain length of time, just like a glove. There are good ones that last a long time. But they don't last forever.
Bertolt Brecht
poetry is not—except in a very limited sense—a form of self-expression. Who on earth supposes that the pearl expresses the oyster?
Cecil Day-Lewis
Speech is the small change of silence.
George Meredith
Truth starts with truth and ends with truth.
Santosh Kalwar
Whoever falls from God's right hand is caught into His left.
Edwin Markham