Quotes by Poets

My love for Neo-Tokyo is a bulbous massof post-human organic circuitry.Cyperpunk is my mother tongue.My love is a man-machine interface gun.
Yann Rousselot
8 April 1891The obscenity of nostrils and mouths; the ignominious cupidity of smiles and women encountered in the street; the shifty baseness on every side, as of hyenas and wild beasts ready to bite: tradesmen in their shops and strollers on their pavements. How long must I suffer this? I have suffered it before, as a child, when, descending by chance to the servant's quarters, I overheard in astonishment their vile gossip, tearing up my own kind with their lovely teeth.This hostility to the entire race, this muted detestation of lynxes in human form, I must have rediscovered it later while at school. I had a repugnance and horror for all base instincts, but am I not myself instinctively violent and lewd, murderous and sensual? Am I any different, in essence, from the members of the riotous and murderous mob of a hundred years ago, who hurled the town sergeants into the Seine and cried, 'String up the aristos!' just as they shout 'Down with the army!' or 'Death to the Jews!
Jean Lorrain
Hairspray and blusher, eyelash curlers, eye-shadow palettes the size of tea-trays. Even before they left school it was as if they were already rehearsing for some witless kind of womanhood.
Alison Fell
I'll never know why it was important to him that the couple (he said it later that he'd never seen them before) would take a picture of the whole Mr. Johnson back to Little Rock.He must have been tired of being crippled, as prisoners tire of penitentiary bars and the guilty tire of blame. The high topped shoes and the cane, his uncontrollable muscles and thick tongue, and the looks he suffered of either contempt or pity had simply worn him out, and for one afternoon, one part of an afternoon, he wanted no part of them.I understood and felt closer to him at that moment than ever before or since.
Maya Angelou
Oh ParisFrom red to green all the yellow dies awayParis Vancouver Hyeres Maintenon New York and the AntillesThe window opens like an orangeThe beautiful fruit of light("Windows")
Guillaume Apollinaire
If you join the rat race — you're in the race of rats.
Bertolt Brecht
Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!It seems she hangs upon the cheek of nightLike a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.So shows a snowy dove trooping with crowsAs yonder lady o'er her fellows shows.The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
William Shakespeare
You may not want to hear that or think of it as writing, but I’m telling you that the moving of information is a literary act in and of itself. Even when people aren’t reading it.
Kenneth Goldsmith
September laughed and her laugh sounded like a roar; as if she had never been able to properly laugh in her whole life, only giggle or chuckle or grin, and now that she could do it right, now that her laughing had grown up and put bells on, it had become the most boisterous, rowdy roar you ever heard.
Catherynne M. Valente
Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.
Raymond Carver
Happy the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind and has given up worrying once and for all.
Ovid
She's beautiful and therefore to be woo'd: She is a woman therefore to be won.
William Shakespeare
Never wedding ever wooing Still a lovelorn heart pursuing Read you not the wrong you're doing In my cheek's pale hue? All my life with sorrow strewing Wed or cease to woo.
Thomas Campbell
Few things surpass old wine and they may preach Who please the more because they preach in vain - Let us have wine and women mirth and laughter Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Lord Byron
An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.
Henry Wotton
It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.
Sophocles
He that doth the ravens feed. Yea providently caters for the sparrow. Be comfort to my age!
William Shakespeare
Dine on little and sup on less.
Miguel de Cervantes
All things come round to him who will but wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The angel of spring the mellow-throated nightingale.
Sappho
It is the hour when from the boughs The nightingale's high note is heard It is the hour when lovers' vows Seem sweet in every whisper'd word.
Lord Byron
And what is so rare as a day in June? Then if ever come perfect days Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune And over it softly her warm ear lays.
James Russell Lowell
Are you good men and true?
William Shakespeare
Is life worth living? Aye with the best of us Heights of us depths of us- Life is the test of us!
Corinne Roosevelt Robinson
Feast and your halls are crowded Fast and the world goes by.
Ella Wheeler Wilc
The feast of reason and the flow of soul.
Alexander Pope
Let us have wine and woman mirth and laughter. Sermons and soda-water the day after.
Lord Byron
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea The ploughman homeward plods his weary way And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Thomas Gray
Some statesmen go to Congress and some go to jail. It is the same thing after all.
Eugene Field
Let us be of good cheer remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never happen.
James Russell Lowell
Better is half a loaf than no bread.
John Heywood
Here we have a baby. It is composed of a bald head and a pair of lungs.
Eugene Field
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
Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form. I am aware that, in some minds, this tends to be regarded as a delicate subject. Let me declare very simply that I do not share such a sentiment. There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life. One of my all-time favourite lines comes from the black American poet Langston Hughes. It reads, simply, 'There is no lavender word for lynch'.
Wole Soyinka
Love changes everything. I never suspected it would be so. Requited love, I should say ...
Barbara Kingsolver
No longer mourn for me when I am deadthan you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that I am fled from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: nay, if you read this line, remember not the hand that writ it, for I love you so, that I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,if thinking on me then should make you woe. O! if, I say, you look upon this verse when I perhaps compounded am with clay, do not so much as my poor name rehearse; but let your love even with my life decay; lest the wise world should look into your moan, and mock you with me after I am gone.
William Shakespeare
But first whom shall we sendIn search of this new world, whom shall we findSufficient? Who shall tempt, with wand'ring feetThe dark unbottomed infinite abyssAnd through the palpable obscure find outHis uncouth way, or spread his aery flightUpborne with indefatigable wingsOver the vast abrupt, ere he arriveThe happy isle?
John Milton
Let whoever wants to, relax in the south,And bask in the garden of paradise.Here is the essence of north—and it's autumnI've chosen as this year's friend.
Anna Akhmatova
Handcuffs weigh much more than gravestones.(from "Gratitude")
Visar Zhiti
I hoped and prayed that they would someday forgive me for leaving them. I hoped and prayed that I would someday forgive myself for leaving them.
Sherman Alexie
I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric productAnd look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.
Walt Whitman
But despite the fact that Reardan is a tiny town, people can still be strangers to each other.
Sherman Alexie
Haste denies all acts their dignity.
Dante Alighieri
Such is the condition of organic nature! whose first law might be expressed in the words 'Eat or be eaten!' and which would seem to be one great slaughter-house, one universal scene of rapacity and injustice!
Erasmus Darwin
Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother things was merely cute may have been lethal.
Margaret Atwood
I was angry at myself for my inclination to vice. I longed for the day when a state of frenzy would lead my mind to sober pasture, just as it had for Saint Augustine. I longed for the day when the love of one woman would be sacred enough to forget all the rest.
Roman Payne
Being smart and rich are lucky, but being curious and compassionate will save your ass. Being curious and compassionate can take you out of your ego and edge your soul towards wonder.
Mary Karr
Why should I care about you first kiss,' he said. 'You can kiss anyone you like. But sometimes if you wanted to kiss me, that would be all right, too.
Catherynne M. Valente
... I slipped our wicker bed and walked the sands where we were also roughly repeated: some young couple, "you did," "I didn't," "you sure the fuck did" – they huggedthat bicker to their chests like blankets fighting cold.
Albert Goldbarth
But you shouldn't have let her. That's the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high--innocent or guilty. She'd have come round in time. We all do! Custom does it! It's all the same in the end! However, I think she's fond of her man still--whatever he med be of her. You were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on-- her spirit for kicking would have been broke soon enough! There's nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming us women. Besides, you've got the laws on your side. Moses knew.
Thomas Hardy
When we our betters see bearing our woes,We scarcely think our miseries our foes.
William Shakespeare
Fill this city of mine with people as,You filled the river with fishes O Lord.
Quli Qutub Shah
When I walked into the house, I went in search of one of my dad's bottles. Not that they were that hard to find. He hid bottles all over the house. I knew where they all were. That was one of my hobbies, finding where my dad hid his bottles. It was my version of looking for Easter eggs. In my house, Easter lasted forever.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Do not blame a person for drinking lest he is trying to forget something more serious than drinking.
Kahlil Gibran
Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.
Ogden Nash
So I draw because I feel like it might be my only real chance to escape the reservation.
Sherman Alexie
Here, are the stiffening hills, here, the rich cargoCongealed in the dark arteries,Old veinsThat hold Glamorgan's blood.The midnight miner in the secret seams,Limb, life, and
Mervyn Peake
Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar, Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar. English Translation. Oh Khusrau, the river of love Runs in strange directions. One who jumps into it drowns, And one who drowns, gets across.
Amir Khusrau
When Eve upon the first of MenThe apple press’d with specious cant,Oh! what a thousand pities thenThat Adam was not adamant!
Thomas Hood
Programmers are not mathematicians, no matter how much we wish and wish for it.
Richard P. Gabriel