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
Almost nothing is known about Homer, which explains why so much has been written about him.
Richard Armour
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
He pondered that a little while and then he asked, do Black people have to pay for their doctors, too? Because that's what TV programs had said. I smiled a little at this and told him it's not only Black people who have to pay for doctors and medical care; all people in America have to. Ah, he said. And suppose you don't have the money to pay? Well, I said, if you don't have the money to pay, sometimes you died. And there was no mistaking my gesture, even though he had to wait for the translator to translate it. We left him looking absolutely nonplussed, standing in the middle of the square with his mouth open and his hand under his chin staring after me, as in utter amazement that human beings could die from lack of medical care. It's things like that that keep me dreaming about Russia long after I've returned.
Audre Lorde
Wise people do not claim to know it all, they always choose to learn from others.
Gift Gugu Mona
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
DADDYYou do not do, you do not doAny more, black shoeIn which I have lived like a footFor thirty years, poor and white,Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.Daddy, I have had to kill you.You died before I had time―Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,Ghastly statue with one grey toeBig as a Frisco sealAnd a head in the freakish AtlanticWhen it pours bean green over blueIn the waters of beautiful Nauset.I used to pray to recover you.Ach, du.In the German tongue, in the Polish townScraped flat by the rollerOf wars, wars, wars.But the name of the town is common.My Polack friendSays there are a dozen or two.So I never could tell where youPut your foot, your root,I never could talk to you.The tongue stuck in my jaw.It stuck in a barb wire snare.Ich, ich, ich, ich,I could hardly speak.I thought every German was you.And the language obsceneAn engine, an engineChuffing me off like a Jew.A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.I began to talk like a Jew.I think I may well be a Jew.The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of ViennaAre not very pure or true.With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luckAnd my Taroc pack and my Taroc packI may be a bit of a Jew.I have always been scared of you,With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.And your neat mustacheAnd your Aryan eye, bright blue.Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You―Not God but a swastikaSo black no sky could squeak through.Every woman adores a Fascist,The boot in the face, the bruteBrute heart of a brute like you.You stand at the blackboard, daddy,In the picture I have of you,A cleft in your chin instead of your footBut no less a devil for that, no notAnd less the black man whoBit my pretty red heart in two.I was ten when they buried you.At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do.But they pulled me out of the sack,And they stuck me together with glue.And then I knew what to do.I made a model of you,A man in black with a Meinkampf lookAnd a love of the rack and the screw.And I said I do, I do.So daddy, I’m finally through.The black telephone’s off at the root,The voices just can’t worm through.If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two―The vampire who said he was youAnd drank my blood for a year,Seven years, if you want to know.Daddy, you can lie back now.There’s a stake in your fat black heartAnd the villagers never like you.They are dancing and stamping on you.They always knew it was you.Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
Sylvia Plath
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
Do you remember the long orphanage of the train stationsWe crossed cities that turn-tabled all dayAnd vomited at night the sunshine of the day ("The Voyager")
Pierre Albert-Birot
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
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
The angel of spring the mellow-throated nightingale.
Sappho
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
Unbidden guests Are often welcomest when they are gone.
William Shakespeare
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
Feast and your halls are crowded Fast and the world goes by.
Ella Wheeler Wilc
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
The prickly thorn often bears soft roses.
Ovid
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
Who goeth a borrowing Goeth a sorrowing.
Thomas Tusser
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
I know that today, with a full tank, and with Annabel, that it's time to go.
Steven Herrick
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
At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Death is like that, it blinks, we blink; not always able to see the Stop signs, hiding behind trees in the corner of the roads.
Anthony Liccione
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
The most critical risk of all, is not taking the risk if means be dangerous.
Anthony Liccione
...intimacy isn't something men talk about. They may talk about politics, literature, stocks, or sports, depending on the man, but about their love lives they keep silent, even to their dying breath.
Michel Houellebecq