Quotes by Poets - Page 469

The people need poetry that will be their own secretTo keep them awake forever,And bathe them in the bright-haired wave of its breathing.
Osip Mandelstam
I want to do something very important. Like fly into the past and make it come out right.
Marge Piercy
By the day,I praised you and never knew it, by night, I stayed with you and never knew it. I always thought I was me but no,I was you and never knew it.
Jalaluddin Rumi
It was God who gave a man's rib to a woman. But it is man who must learn to give away his heart and never take it back.
Richelle E. Goodrich
A good word will spread in the grapevine, bringing forth clusters of grapes and the benevolent of wine; a bad word will spread withering the vines, and choke the potential grapes.
Anthony Liccione
If you are not willing to stand up for anything or anybody, then why should the Creator take a single step to help you?
Suzy Kassem
You know one day, you're going to look back on these days. And everyone you went to high school with will either be getting married to each other, shitting out kids, or dropping dead like flies," when she spoke, Miss Jenson sighed at the end of every few words; she must have been narrating her own thoughts she might have otherwise kept to herself, "and everything you never did, you'll never be able to even try.
Dave Matthes
The mountain remains unmoved at seeming defeat by the mist.
Rabindranath Tagore
Man, free thinker!Do you imagine you alone think in this world where life is blazing forth in all things?You are free to avail yourself of the forces you command, but the universe has gone missing from your prescriptions.
Gérard de Nerval
We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward.
Alison Croggon
Sweet and low sweet and low Wind of the western sea Low low breathe and blow Wind of the western sea!
Lord Alfred Tennyson
Nature fits all her children with something to do He who would write and can't write can surely review.
James Russell Lowell
Look into words for the tomb of spacewhere beauties & stones & eternities untangle.(...)In them is the flood which bothers the seaand the songs which need no music.Say these words that evolve into silence,whose language survives not being understood.Pronounce those which are unpalatable &untangle from all the world wants to hear.
M.T.C. Cronin
It's simple, it's not that simple; or life is simple, but the things in it are not. When a man does not understand it, he tends to inflate it. When he does, he tends to deflate it. In the end, neither images are fully accurate.
Criss Jami
I shout at him to remind him of his duties. That does not mean that I do not trust him at all.
Anuradha Bhattacharyya
Compañera usted sabe que puede contar conmigo no hasta dos o hasta diez sino contar conmigosi alguna vez advierte que la miro a los ojos y una veta de amor reconoce en los míos no alerte sus fusiles ni piense qué delirio a pesar de la veta o tal vez porque existe usted puede contar conmigosi otras veces me encuentra huraño sin motivo no piense qué flojera igual puede contar conmigopero hagamos un trato yo quisiera contar con usted es tan lindo saber que usted existe uno se siente vivo y cuando digo esto quiero decir contar aunque sea hasta dos aunque sea hasta cinco no ya para que acuda presurosa en mi auxilio sino para saber a ciencia cierta que usted sabe que puede contar conmigo
Mario Benedetti Hagamos un trato
Meanwhile Bellgrove had been savouring love's rare aperitif, the ageless language of the eyes.
Mervyn Peake
How little our careers express what lies in us, and yet how much time they take up. It's sad, really.
Philip Larkin
I've never been able to write poetry without having vast tracts of dead time. Poetry requires a certain kind of disciplined indolence that the world, including many prose writers, doesn't recognize as discipline. It is, though. It's the discipline to endure hours that you refuse to fill with anything but the possibility of poetry, though you may in fact not be able to write a word of it just then, and though it may be playing practical havoc with your life. It's the discipline of preparedness.
Christian Wiman
I don't write like this in order to show how clever and well read I am--though I am rather clever and well read as a matter of fact.
John Heath-Stubbs
Hope is an echo hope ties itself yonder yonder.
Carl Sandburg
I'll never get over the factthat the buildings all light up at night,and the night comes every nightand without regret we let it go.We sleep a little and we live.That's what we do.
Alex Dimitrov
We, unaccustomed to courageexiles from delightlive coiled in shells of lonelinessuntil love leaves its high holy templeand comes into our sightto liberate us into life.Love arrivesand in its train come ecstasiesold memories of pleasureancient histories of pain.Yet if we are bold,love strikes away the chains of fearfrom our souls.We are weaned from our timidityIn the flush of love's lightwe dare be braveAnd suddenly we seethat love costs all we areand will ever be.Yet it is only lovewhich sets us free.
Maya Angelou
...she could not stick by the golden mean...was always anxious to experiment in extremes...to find out what was enough by indulging herself in too much." (Gordon Lameyer)
Elizabeth Winder
The great art of life is sensation to feel that we exist even in pain.
Lord Byron
I reread these negative remarks and realize that I do not know whether music can despair of music or marble of marble. I do know that literature is an art that can foresee the time when it will be silenced, an art that can become inflamed with its own virtue, fall in love with its own decline, and court its own demise.
Jorge Luis Borges
I was afraid to write Fear of Flying ergo I had to write it. I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it then I must do it.
Erica Jong
God will win every contest in life, so stop trying to beat Him at his own game.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Ultimately, we will lose each otherto something. I would hope for grandcircumstance—death or disaster.But it might not be that way at all.It might be that you walk outone morning after making loveto buy cigarettes, and never return,or I fall in love with another …It might be a slow drift into indifference.Either way, we’ll have to learnto bear the weight of the eventualitythat we will lose each other to something.So why not begin now, while your headrests like a perfect moon in my lap …?Why not reach for the seam in this …night and tear it, just a little, so the fallingcan begin? Because later, when we crosseach other on the streets, and are forcedto look away, when we’ve thrownthe disregarded pieces of our togethernessinto bedroom drawers and the smellof our bodies is disappearing like the sweetdecay of lilies—what will we call it,when it’s no longer love?
Tishani Doshi
Words were his delight; Hers, a gay gracefulnessOf dancing and moving. But when to the place Of deep loving (Starlight at midnight)At last they came, Their full communion And consummation,Their complete sphere,Was stillness for her,Silence for him.
Theodore Spencer
I feel life trembling within me, in my tongue, on the soles of my feet, in my desire or my suffering, I want my soul to be a wandering thing, able to move back into a hundred forms, I want to dream myself into priests and wanderers, female cooks and murderers, children and animals, and, more than anything else, birds and trees; that is necessary, I want it, I need it so I can go on living, and if sometime I were to lose these possibilities and be caught in so-called reality, then I would rather die.
Hermann Hesse
In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.Speech is born out of longing,True description from the real taste.The one who tastes, knows;the one who explains, lies.How can you describe the true form of SomethingIn whose presence you are blotted out?And in whose being you still exist?And who lives as a sign for your journey?
Rabia Al-Adawiyya
WHAT DOES AN OLD MAN GAIN BY EXERCISINGwhat will he gain by talking on the phonewhat will he gain by going after fame, tell mewhat does he gain by looking in the mirrorNothingeach time he just sinks deeper in the mudIt’s already three or four in the morningwhy doesn’t he try to go to sleepbut no--he won’t stop doing exercisewon’t stop with his famous long-distance callswon’t stop with Bachtt with Beethoventttt with Tchaikovskywon’t stop with the long looks in the mirrorwon’t stop with the ridiculous obsession about continuing to breathepitiful--it would be better if he turned out the lightRidiculous old man his mother says to himyou and your father are exactly alikehe didn’t want to die eithermay God grant you the strength to drive a carmay God grant you the strength to talk on the phonemay God grant you the strength to breathe may God grant you the strength to bury your motherYou fell asleep, you ridiculous old man!but the poor wretch does not intend to sleepLet’s not confuse crying with sleeping
Nicanor Parra
A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?
Margaret Atwood
I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules.
Criss Jami
Quiero hacer contigo lo que la primavera hace con los cerezos
Pablo Neruda
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light;Tot wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;Not as she is, but as she fills his dreams.
Christina Rossetti
What is your substance, whereof are you made,That millions of strange shadows on you tend?Since everyone hath every one, one shade,And you, but one, can every shadow lend.Describe Adonis, and the counterfeitIs poorly imitated after you.On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,And you in Grecian tires are painted new.Speak of the spring and foison of the year;The one doth shadow of your beauty show,The other as your bounty doth appear,And you in every blessèd shape we know.In all external grace you have some part,But you like none, none you, for constant heart.
William Shakespeare
Why must it be so hard For us to come to understand,That there are things we cannot changeHidden amongst the things we can?For we can rearrange our hearts,Dust out the corners of our minds,We can teach our eyes to seeOnly the things we wish to find.Yet once we decorate our wallsAnd sweep our sorrows off the floor,Why do we look to someone else,To show us how we can be more?For here is where the line Between our can and can't gets tough,Just the point at which we all must learnThat we are already enough,That since we cannot choose the home,Our only soul was born into,We should rearrange its roomsBut learn to love its window's view.
Erin Hanson
A man must be able to cut a knot for everything cannot be untied he must know how to disengage what is essential from the detail in which it is enwrapped for everything cannot be equally considered in a word he must be able to simplify his duties his business and his life.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
There was a man with tongue of woodWho essayed to sing,And in truth it was lamentable.But there was one who heardThe clip-clapper of this tongue of woodAnd knew what the manWished to sing,And with that the singer was content.
Stephen Crane
We pull our boots on with both handsbut we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorryabout the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
Richard Siken
Fame turns out to be a powerful instrument of grace because it humbles its chosen victims in a hurry. You sail into it, your canvas swelled with grandiosity, and when your fifteen minutes are over and you are becalmed, you realize that grandiosity cannot take you where you need to go.Only then do you learn to row like hell, asking God for the strength to stay afloat.
Erica Jong
First love," said Ida with a sigh. "That's the one that kills you.
Lang Leav
(Dune's Frank) Herbert made religion the inescapable instrument of cultural change.
Joseph Bottum
If your not willing to do the work that your instructing me to do. I will look down on you.
Jonathan Burkett
Windisch closes his eyes. He feels his eyes. He feels his eyeballs in his hands. His eyes without a face.
Herta Müller
An empty bus hurtles through the starry nightPerhaps the driver is singingand happy because he sings.
Günter Grass
A people are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose it’s moorings or orientation... Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.
Ben Okri
Every spark returns to darkness. Every sound returns to silence. Every flower returns to sleep with the earth. The journey of the sun and moon is predictable. But yours, is your ultimateart.
Suzy Kassem
A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past according to his interest in the present.
George Santayana
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him; The evil that men do lives after them, The good is oft interred with their bones
William Shakespeare
Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.
Aleister Crowley
Love is bitter, death is sweet.
Jack Kerouac
As the river enters into the ocean,so my heart touches Thee.
Kabir
Some are born to sweet delight, Some are born to endless night.
William Blake
Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.His name, as I ought to have told you before,Is really Asparagus. That's such a fussTo pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —But no longer a terror to mice or to rats.For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time.And whenever he joins his friends at their club(which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.For he once was a Star of the highest degree —He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
T.S Eliot
Ail hope abandon ye who enter here.
Dante Alighieri
Break, break, break,On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!And I would that my tongue could utterThe thoughts that arise in me.O, well for the fisherman's boy,That he shouts with his sister at play!O, well for the sailor lad,That he sings in his boat on the bay!And the stately ships go onTo their haven under the hill;But O for the touch of a vanished hand,And the sound of a voice that is still!Break, break, break,At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!But the tender grace of a day that is deadWill never come back to me.
Alfred Tennyson
A moment can be left inside the memory of time.
Munia Khan