Quotes by Poets - Page 478

Art is the child of nature in whom we trace the features of the mothers face.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Most of us carry at least a weak sense of a correlation between poetry and human possibility that cannot be realized by poems. The poet, by his very claim to be a maker of poems, is therefore both an embarrassment and accusation.
Ben Lerner
Sweet meat must have sour sauce.
Ben Jonson
Your body is the house you grew up in. How dare you try to burn it to the ground.
Sierra DeMulder
Stone, steel, dominions pass,Faith too, no wonder;So leave alone the grassThat I am under.
A.E. Housman
Remembering, in Spanish, means to pass something through the heart again, and now all the years are going through his heart again as he tries to turn away from the ocean. But he hears it and he knows it is out there. Some sleepless nights he goes out. But this night in his sleep he says, "Oh, look at all those beautiful life rafts.
Linda Hogan
Listen, whatever you see and love—that’s where you are.
Mary Oliver
At bottom the world isn't a joke. We only joke about it to avoid an issue with someone to let someone know that we know he's there with his questions to disarm him by seeming to have heard and done justice to his side of the standing argument.
Robert Frost
This is the body's nurse; but since man's witFound the art of cookery, to delight his sense,More bodies are consumed and kill'd with itThan with the sword, famine, or pestilence.
John Davies of Hereford
When men in Congress come to blows at somemthing someone said,I always notice that it shows their blood is quick and red;But if two women disagree, with very little noise,It proves, and this seems strange to me, that women have no poise.
Alice Duer Miller
Rather than swallowing our pride and simply asking what we do not know, we choose to fill in the blanks ourselves and later become humbled. Wisdom was often, in its youth, proven foolish, and ones humiliated were meant to become wise.
Criss Jami
The more material we lose, the less we have. The less we have, the more we win.
Anthony Liccione
The sum of things to be known is inexhaustible, and however long we read, we shall never come to the end of our story-
A.E. Housman
War is what happens when language fails.
Margaret Atwood
I'm a buried kind of beautiful.Bring a shovel and a shooting starI may be a night's work.
Casey Renee Kiser
To create, I destroyed myself; I made myself external to such a degree within myself that within myself I do not exist except in an external fashion. I am the living setting in which several actors make entrances, putting on several different plays.
Fernando Pessoa
Sleep is death enjoyed.
Friedrich Hebbel
When he was dry, he believed it was alcohol he needed, but when he had a few drinks in him, he knew it was something else, possibly a woman; and when he had it all -- cash, booze, and a wife -- he couldn't be distracted from the great emptiness that was always falling through him and never hit the ground.
Denis Johnson
A snake was never called by its name at night, because it would hear. It was called a string.
Chinua Achebe
The prickly thorn often bears soft roses.
Ovid
A minority may be right a majority is always wrong.
Henrik Ibsen
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
John Keats
What we fail to realize is we often become like Pharisees in our ruthless attempts to identify Pharisees (and impostors). While indeed some people use the old laws of religious pride to tear down men of God, others use the new laws of anti-religious anger to tear down men of God.
Criss Jami
Basically, that's why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.
Charles Bukowski
The world had been divided into two parts that sought to annihilate each other because they both desired the same thing, namely the liberation of the oppressed, the elimination of violence, and the establishment of permanent peace.
Hermann Hesse
Studies show that the IQ range of most creative people is surprisingly narrow, around 120 to 130. Higher IQs can perform certain kinds of tasks better--logic, feats of memory, and so on. But if the IQ is much higher or lower than that, the window of creativity closes. Nonetheless, for some reason we believe more is better, so people yearn for tip-top IQs, and that calls for bigger memories. A fast, retentive memory is handy, but no skeleton key for survival.
Diane Ackerman
But hereto is replied that the poets give names to men they write of, which argueth a conceit of an actual truth, and so, not being true, proveth a falsehood. And doth the lawyer lie then, when, under the names of John of the Stile, and John of the Nokes, he putteth his case? But that is easily answered: their naming of men is but to make their picture the more lively, and not to build any history. Painting men, they cannot leave men nameless. We see we cannot play at chess but that we must give names to our chess-men; and yet, me thinks, he were a very partial champion of truth that would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend title of a bishop.
Philip Sidney
Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.
Jim Morrison
The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Great wealth, like a crowd at a concert,Gathers and melts.
Thiruvalluvar
I think whenever there’s potential for beauty, beauty can be found. And everything has potential for beauty.
Kamand Kojouri
Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'hierarchies? and even if one of thempressed me against his heart: I would be consumedin that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothingbut the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,and we are so awed because it serenely disdainsto annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Horrors of a nature most stern and most appalling would too frequently obtrude themselves upon my mind, and shake the innermost depths of my soul with the bare supposition of their possibility.
Edgar Allan Poe
Alone alone all all alone Alone on a wide wide sea.
Hartley Coleridge
She wasn't broken. She was just bent, over the chance of being ignored by the one she loved.
Robert M. Drake
Late, by myself, in the boat of myself,no light and no land anywhere,cloudcover thick. I try to stayjust above the surface, yet I'm already underand living within the ocean.
Jalaluddin Rumi
In faith and hope the world will disagree but all mankind's concern is charity.
Alexander Pope
In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.
Mark Strand
The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Time goes, you say? Ah no!Alas, Time stays, we go;Or else, were this not so, What need to chain the hours,For Youth were always ours?Time goes, you say?-ah no!Ours is the eyes' deceitOf men whose flying feetLead through some landscape low; We pass, and think we seeThe earth's fixed surface flee:-Alas, Time stays,-we go!Once in the days of old,Your locks were curling gold,And mine had shamed the crow. Now, in the self-same stage,We've reached the silver age;Time goes, you say?-ah no!Once, when my voice was strong,I filled the woods with songTo praise your 'rose' and 'snow'; My bird, that sang, is dead;Where are your roses fled?Alas, Time stays,-we go!See, in what traversed ways,What backward Fate delaysThe hopes we used to know; Where are our old desires?-Ah, where those vanished fires?Time goes, you say?-ah no!How far, how far, O Sweet,The past behind our feetLies in the even-glow! Now, on the forward way,Let us fold hands, and pray;Alas, Time stays,-we go!
Henry Austin Dobson
This is the only truth in the world that was necessary yesterday, is necessary today, and will continue to be necessary tomorrow: be conscious of now.
Kamand Kojouri
Wild Nights – Wild Nights!Were I with theeWild Nights should beOur luxury!Futile – the winds –To a heart in port –Done with the compass –Done with the chart!Rowing in Eden –Ah, the sea!Might I moor – Tonight –In thee!
Emily Dickinson
Confronted with the choice between having time and having things, we’ve chosen to have things. Today it is a luxury to read what Socrates said, not because the books are expensive, but because our time is scarce.
Gabriel Zaid
When love is not madness it is not love.
Pedro Calderón de la Barca
God is not anybody's problem, nor are the many paths to him. However, man is God's problem. Most of the problems across the land are due to man's hand. Men playing God. Men tampering with the divine plan. If it was all left to God then there would be peace among all living things. Yet man is his own enemy. People doubt Satan exists, but he has always existed in left eye of every man. In the moon of man, which harbors the ego of man. Only when you train yourself to see only through your right eye, which reflects the sun, conscience and heart of man - will you have truly defeated Satan. Know which eye reflects the heart and which reflects the mind and only then will you really begin to see the light. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them.
Suzy Kassem
But if I'm useless only because I haven't been properly educated, is that my fault?
Richard Aldington
Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow...a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
He will give the devil his due.
William Shakespeare
Last night, I spoke to God.I told Him my plans. He started to cry.I thought I was great to move The Greatest to tears.He said that He was crying only becausemy plans were very differentthan His plans for me.
Kamand Kojouri
my life was lived through falling rainso call on me if there be pain
Tupac Shakur
Time cures you first, and then it kills you.
Barbara Kingsolver
Unbelievably, while many non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International and America’s Watch have denounced the human rights situation in Cuba, there has been a continuing love affair on the part of the media and many intellectuals with Fidel Castro.
Armando Valladares
There are metaphors more real than the people who walk in the street. There are images tucked away in books that live more vividly than many men and women. There are phrases from literary works that have a positively human personality. There are passages from my own writing that chill me with fright, so distinctly do I feel them as people, so sharply outlined do they appear against the walls of my room, at night, in shadows... I've written sentences whose sound, read out loud or silently (impossible to hide their sound), can only be of something that acquired absolute exteriority and a full-fledged soul.
Fernando Pessoa
If your doctrine changed for the better yet your character changed for the worse, you changed for the worse.
Criss Jami
I am not convinced of the argument, 'I want to believe; it is only those awful Christians I hate. They get in the way of my belief.' If you hate Christians more than you love Christ, you do not love Christ. It comes to mind the question, 'If you do not love your brother or sister whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you have not seen?
Criss Jami
A box sits empty,wanting to hold and protect.Hollow tears it cries.
Richelle E. Goodrich
I do have a funny perception of mine I'd like to share. Being basically a lifetime poet. I've had many people say "I don't like poetry" But they'll listen to song after song that rhymes on the end in couplets Just a thought...
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Are we always to be wantingwhat isn't:the greenest grassaccord and principlemotherhood and career?Yet our age lies to uslike an asp,whispering. "Both.
Barbara Crooker
The reason for the unreason with which you treat my reason , so weakens my reason that with reason I complain of your beauty.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
everything is absurd.1 man spends his life earning money which he then saves even though he has no children 2 leave it 2. another puts all his efforts into becoming famous so that he'll b remembered once dead, yet he doesn't believe in a survival of the soul that would give him knowledge of that fame. yet another wears himself out looking 4 things he doesn't even like.
Fernando Pessoa