Quotes by Poets - Page 102

A change of style is a change of meaning.
Wallace Stevens
An owl sound wandered along the road with me.I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.
William Stafford
Keep a journal, and don't assume that your work has to accomplish anything worthy: artists and peace-workers are in it for the long haul, and not to be judged by immediate results.
William Stafford
Oh what a poet I will flay myself into.
Sylvia Plath
This Obamacare thing really scares me. The United States government / politicians are trying to turn the American people into a brand X “One size fits all” country. The past ten years has been very grim for Americans. Our current state is very grim. Our future is even more grim than ever. I used to tell people that it will get worse before it gets better. Now, I just say it will get worse.
Carroll Bryant
I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.
Kay Ryan
What a ruler has to rely upon is only the human heart. Human hearts are to the ruler what roots are to a tree, what oil is to a lamp, water to fish, fields to a farmer, or money to a merchant.
Su Shi
[It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth.
George Oppen
I was about as political as a bath towel.
Michel Houellebecq
Even on the saddest nightin times of servitudethere is always someone who resiststhere is always someone who says no.
Manuel Alegre
Bernie Saunders is like a fly buzzing around a bowl of rotten fruit. Long hail this fly!
Marge Simon
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,and whose shepherds mislead them.Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.Pity the nation that raises not its voice,except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as heroand aims to rule the world with force and by torture.Pity the nation that knows no other language but its ownand no other culture but its own.Pity the nation whose breath is moneyand sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erodeand their freedoms to be washed away.My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to most people?
E.E. Cummings
This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.
T.S Eliot
Death is never an ending, death is a change;Death is beautiful, for death is strange;Death is one dream out of another flowing.
Conrad Aiken
Even though I seem not human, a mute shelfof glucose, bottled blood, machineryto swell the lung and pump the heart—even so,do not put out my life. Let me still glow.
Dudley Randall
peace of mind and heartarriveswhen we accept what is:having beenborn into thisstrange lifewe must acceptthe wasted gamble of ourdaysand take some satisfaction inthe pleasure ofleaving it allbehind.
Charles Bukowski
Dear friend, I have searched all nightthrough each burnt paper,but I fear I will never findthe formula to let you die
Leonard Cohen
I sat in that room and realized that you can cut off a finger, cut off a hand, even cut off a leg, but if you take a woman's breast, you are cutting more than just a body part.
Charles Martin
Every war is the war for whoever's lived through it.
Margaret Atwood
It is a great wonderHow Almighty God in his magnificenceFavors our race with rank and scopeAnd the gift of wisdom; His sway is wide.Sometimes He allows the mind of a manOf distinguished birth to follow its bent,Grants him fulfillment and felicity on earth And forts to command in his own country.He permits him to lord it in many landsUntil the man in his unthinkingnessForgets that it will ever end for him.He indulges his desires; illness and old ageMean nothing to him; his mind is untroubledBy envy or malice or thought of enemiesWith their hate-honed swords. The whole worldConforms to his will, he is kept from the worstUntil an element of overweening Enters him and takes holdWhile the soul’s guard, its sentry, drowses,Grown too distracted. A killer stalks him,An archer who draws a deadly bow.And then the man is hit in the heart,The arrow flies beneath his defenses,The devious promptings of the demon start.His old possessions seem paltry to him now.He covets and resents; dishonors customAnd bestows no gold; and because of good things That the Heavenly powers gave him in the pastHe ignores the shape of things to come.Then finally the end arrivesWhen the body he was lent collapses and fallsPrey to its death; ancestral possessionsAnd the goods he hoarded and inherited by anotherWho lets them go with a liberal hand.“O flower of warriors, beware of that trap.Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part,Eternal rewards. Do not give way to pride. For a brief while your strength is in bloomBut it fades quickly; and soon there will followIllness or the sword to lay you low,Or a sudden fire or surge of waterOr jabbing blade or javelin from the airOr repellent age. Your piercing eyeWill dim and darken; and death will arrive,Dear warrior, to sweep you away.
Seamus Heaney
Mr. Edwards and the Spider"I saw the spiders marching through the air,Swimming from tree to tree that mildewed dayIn latter August when the hayCame creaking to the barn. But whereThe wind is westerly,Where gnarled November makes the spiders flyInto the apparitions of the sky,They purpose nothing but their ease and dieUrgently beating east to sunrise and the sea;What are we in the hands of the great God?It was in vain you set up thorn and briarIn battle array against the fireAnd treason crackling in your blood;For the wild thorns grow tameAnd will do nothing to oppose the flame;Your lacerations tell the losing gameYou play against a sickness past your cure.How will the hands be strong? How will the heart endure?A very little thing, a little worm,Or hourglass-blazoned spider, it is said,Can kill a tiger. Will the deadHold up his mirror and affirmTo the four winds the smellAnd flash of his authority? It’s wellIf God who holds you to the pit of hell,Much as one holds a spider, will destroy,Baffle and dissipate your soul. As a small boyOn Windsor Marsh, I saw the spider dieWhen thrown into the bowels of fierce fire:There’s no long struggle, no desireTo get up on its feet and flyIt stretches out its feetAnd dies. This is the sinner’s last retreat;Yes, and no strength exerted on the heatThen sinews the abolished will, when sickAnd full of burning, it will whistle on a brick.But who can plumb the sinking of that soul?Josiah Hawley, picture yourself castInto a brick-kiln where the blastFans your quick vitals to a coal—If measured by a glass,How long would it seem burning! Let there passA minute, ten, ten trillion; but the blazeIs infinite, eternal: this is death,To die and know it. This is the Black Widow, death.
Robert Lowell
My fugitive years are all hasting away,And I must ere long lie as lowly as they,With a turf on my breast, and a stone at my head,Ere another such grove shall arise in its stead.'Tis a sight to engage me, if anything can,To muse on the perishing pleasures of man;Though his life be a dream, his enjoyments I see,Have a being less durable even than he.
William Cowper
Either a man goes and hangs himself, and then he hangs sure enough, and he'll have his reasons for it, or else he goes on living and then he has only living to bother himself with. Simple enough.
Hermann Hesse
UselessnessLet mine not be the saddest fate of all, To live beyond my greater self; to see My faculties decaying, as the tree Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall Let me hear rather the imperious call, Which all men dread, in my glad morning time, And follow death ere I have reached my prime, Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall. The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day Is kinder than the calm that lets it last, Unhappy witness of its own decay. May no man ever look on me and say, 'She lives, but all her usefulness is past.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
That also which before was from the earth, passes back into the earth, and that which was sent from the borders of ether, is carried back and taken in again by the quarters of heaven. Death does not extinguish things in such a way as to destroy the bodies of matter, but only breaks up the union amongst them, and then joins anew the different elements with others; and thus it comes to pass that all things change their shapes and alter their colors and receive sensations and in a moment yield them up...
Titus Lucretius Carus
I'm sucking on a cancer stick trying to think of something inspiring to say to help someone have a better life. That's "Irony".
Stanley Victor Paskavich
I hope to die with dignity and not be on my death bed pondering the afterlife wearing a diaper named Depends.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
I'll never leave this Earth without a fight or at least pretend to for all of those in sight.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
In The Land of Poetry and Fighting, Efficiency rules the throne. I try to live here, so I shave my head because hair is dead and dead is inefficient.
Cameron Conaway
They say the brain never ages it’s a shame it can't teach the body that trick.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Jumping out of a perfectly good air plane is like driving through life without a good set of brakes.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
I've diagnosed myself and discovered I have a limited 'life span' you can do this to. Then live life to its fullest in everything you do!
Stanley Victor Paskavich
If you have a warm and caring heart, you're loved ones will ensure you never depart. For long after you've turned that final page you'll still be right there on center stage.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
A smile to someone could make the difference between them going home and axe murdering their family or having a nice meal!
Stanley Victor Paskavich
The earth will always be the same - only cities and history will change, even nations will change, governments and governors will go, the things made by men's hands will go, buildings will always crumble - only the earth will remain the same, there will always be men on the earth in the morning, there will always be the things made by God's hands - and all this history of cities and congress now will go, all modern history is only a littering Babylon smoking under the sun, delaying the day when men again will have to return to earth, to the earth of life and God -
Jack Kerouac
When clouds will become heavier than the land in us led our entire life by the steps of our Destiny, we will understand that not their moments’ rain has darkened the sun of our life, but the failure to be ourselves.
Sorin Cerin
Pale Death with impartial tread beats at the poor man's cottage door and at the palaces of kings.
Horace
When you depart I'll blow you a Kiss take it to the Loved ones I already Miss.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
George Santayana
As a Black lesbian mother in an interracial marriage, there was usually some part of me guaranteed to offend everybody's comfortable prejudices of who I should be.
Audre Lorde
Certainly there are very real differences between us of race, age, and sex. But it is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation.
Audre Lorde
Every individual has some qualities that endear him to some other. And per contra, I doubt if there is any class which is not detestable to some other class. Artists, police, the clergy, "reds," foxhunters, Freemasons, Jews, "heaven-born," women's clubwomen (especially in U.S.A.), "Methodys," golfers, dog-lovers; you can't find one body without its "natural" enemies. It's right, what's worse; every class, as a class, is almost sure to have more defects than qualities. As soon as you put men together, they somehow sink, corporatively, below the level of the worst of the individuals composing it. Collect scholars on a club committee, or men of science on a jury; all their virtues vanish, and their vices pop out, reinforced by the self-confidence which the power of numbers is bound to bestow.
Aleister Crowley
Anything that elicits an immediate nod of recognition has only reconfirmed a prejudice.
Don Paterson
No elevator of progress with wells of prejudices. (Pas d'ascenseur de progrès - Avec puits de préjugés.)
Charles de Leusse
All prejudice presents itself as piety, propriety.
Hal Duncan
A counter to a jab is a left hook. What’s the counter to prejudice?
Cameron Conaway
We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.
Maya Angelou
I won't be a slave to the past. I'll love where I choose.
Thomas Hardy
All the dreams you show up in are not your own.
Gil Scott-Heron
When we don't pray, we quit the fight. Prayer keeps the Christian's armor bright. And Satan trembles when he sees. The weakest saint upon his knees.
William Cowper
When faced with trials, pray so that you cannot be the trial yourself.
Gift Gugu Mona
A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)
T.S Eliot
Do you think the wren ever dreams of a better house?
Mary Oliver
Cultivate simplicity or rather should I say banish elaborateness, for simplicity springs spontaneous from the heart.
Charles Lamb
She wasn't stupid. She just didn't want to put her neuron power into long sentences.
Margaret Atwood
Even when the truth is in fact simple, simplicity is still relative.
Criss Jami
Simplicity is a sign of being awake.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
When I was a boy, I used to wake up thinking that the world was ending.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
What happened was private. I was in it with Rose. She had hurt me grievously and now I was forever attached. I was in it now with all the women in the world. I walked home glad. I will die, I thought with a bounce in my step. I'm whole. Not whole like anyone else, but whole like me. Painful, but simple. It was very simple now.
Eileen Myles