Quotes by Poets

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, 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
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
Happy the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind and has given up worrying once and for all.
Ovid
It is terrible to speak well and be wrong.
Sophocles
Dine on little and sup on less.
Miguel de Cervantes
All things come round to him who will but wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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
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
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
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
Handcuffs weigh much more than gravestones.(from "Gratitude")
Visar Zhiti
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 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
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
Programmers are not mathematicians, no matter how much we wish and wish for it.
Richard P. Gabriel
I am what the water gave me, / a smoke-ring in a jar, / the braided rope / my ladder-to-the-light, / my shivering bird heart / caught
Pascale Petit
Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one little piece inside you that wants to be spoken out, and if you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter, and if you don't speak it out one day it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside.
Audre Lorde
When I was girl by Nilus stream I watched the deserts stars arise; My lover, he who dreamed the Sphinx, Learned all his dreaming from eyes. I bore in Greece a burning name, And I have been in Italy Madonna to a painter-lad, And mistress to a Medici. And have you heard (and I have heard) Of puzzled men with decorous mien, Who judged - the wench knew far too much - And burnt her on the Salem green?
Adelaide Crapsey
Listening has certainly become a scarce skill, therefore we need ways to enhance this skill especially for the next generation.
Gugu Mona
a generation:the black night gave me black eyesstill I use them to seek the light
Gu Cheng
Unappreciated because too many of his [Rudyard Kipling's] peers were socialists.
Jorge Luis Borges
Bureaucracy is a huge beast; deeply rooted, it exists even among artists; it’s an almost losing battle against it.
Dejan Stojanovic
If ever I create a website, I'll call it Two-Face Book, and I'll invite everyone to it, it will be a game board, of a whitewash chalkboard.A social network, with reserved intentions, where we can fall into our cliques and circle of friends. We can dis who we want and accept who appeals to our discretion. Where the users will keep abusing, and abusers keep using, where the computer bullies will keep swinging and the J-birds that fly by will die; where the lonely will keep seeking and the needy still go desperate, where the envious will keep hating, and the lustful will keep flashing. Where those that think ignoring, will keep one down and the wannabes will foolishly think themselves greater by the number of "likes" that pours caffeine into their coffee. We can jump on the bandwagon of likes, or reserve not to show we care. Where the scorners, scammers and stalkers lay wait to take hold of the innocent and fragile, and my pockets will get fatter as more and more will join up, where being fake is accepted. As a mirror that stares at a different face. It will be my two-face epilogue, in a 3-world dimension, of a twofold war. I will build an empire of contagious hooks, and still we will live, happily-ever disastrous.
Anthony Liccione
People make a great deal of the flowers of spring and the leaves of autumn, but for me a night like this, with a clear moon shining on snow, is the best -- and there is not a trace of color in it. I cannot describe the effect it has on me, weird and unearthly somehow. I do not understand people who find a winter evening forbidding.
Murasaki Shikibu
A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.
Juvenal
Women may fail when there is no strength in man
William Shakespeare
This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust?
William Shakespeare
The medals of the dead heroes are the coins for the future. (Les médailles des héros morts - Sont les pièces pour l'avenir.)
Charles de Leusse
We can't let the next generation grow up without heroes. Some of us have to fight on!
Avijeet Das
Laisha had got a glimpse of the vast ocean that lay before her. She could either eatch it recede from her sight or plunge into it. It was not possible to take the risk of plunging headlong into the ocean. No one viewed the ocean to be drowned into it. Everyone caught only a glimpse of it, exulted in having got this farand returned home with renewed zest. The knowledge that the ocean existed was overwhelming enough. One could wallow in the idea that there was indeed a further possibility, but one merely desisted. it was not right to acknowledge that one was also frightened of it.
Anuradha Bhattacharyya
Tis time to die, when 'tis a shame to live.
Thomas Middleton
It's not what you have on the outside that glitters in light, it's what you have on the inside that shines in the dark.
Anthony Liccione
In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts.' ("Village Ghosts")
W.B. Yeats
We are all 'right' if we are being truly ourselves.... that is the best we can be in each moment, until we learn more...
Jay Woodman
Farsi Couplet: Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast. English Translation: If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this
Amir Khusrau
Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander.
Roman Payne
She watched the dark highway and entertained me with her vegetable-soup song, except that now there were people mixed in with the beans and potatoes: Dwayne Ray, Mattie, Esperanza, Lou Ann and all the rest. And me. I was the main ingredient.
Barbara Kingsolver
It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.
Charles Baudelaire
Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac treeFrom which a small wood-owl calls.
Johannes Bobrowski
I think it’s vital. It’s odd to me because many people say we live in these awful times and we need culture and art especially in times like these, in these dire times. Well, first of all, I don’t think these times are more dire than other times. People who say that just need to go back and read Herodotus, read any book of history, read a biography of Attila the Hun. If people are going to wring their hands over these troubled times, I would think that humor should be indispensable. I find it strange that –at least in my take on it—the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway. Humor is just an ingredient.
Billy Collins
He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
And I realize the unbearable anguish of insanity: how uninformed people can be thinking insane people are "happy," O God, in fact it was Irwin Garden once warned me not to think the madhouses are full of "happy nuts." (p. 200)
Jack Kerouac
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.
William Blake
Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak."Yes—and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape—then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect.""Oh? And what may that be?""It is not a supernatural creature.""But it is all those other things?""Yes.""Then I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not—so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will.""Ah, but it makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.
Roger Zelazny
It did not last: the Devil howling 'Ho, Let Einstein be,' restored the status quo.
John Collings Squire
I am his Highness' dog at Kew;Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Alexander Pope
The pessimist reason that things just happen, where the optimist believe that things happen for a reason.
Anthony Liccione
to ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you, something else is hurting you - that's why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can't think, or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. or vietnam or israel or the fear of spiders. your love washing her yellow false teeth in the sink before you screw.
Charles Bukowski
Only those who will love longer than they expected to can truly love pecan pie, which doesn't explain its status as death rows most requested last dessert, or why chopped pecans, corn syrup, directions from the Karo bottle's cherry-red side are what mercy taste like to some. But there you have it.
Kate Lebo
Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled.
Charles Mackay
Saving and pinching to get married, you're losing the best time of your life.
Muriel Spark