Quotes by Poets - Page 110

I know that my singing doesn’t make the moon rise, nor does it make the stars shine. But without my song, the night would seem empty and incomplete. There is more to daybreak than light, just as there is more to nighttime than darkness.
Geoffrey Chaucer
(I know, it's a poem but oh well).Why! who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles, Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan, Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky, Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the water, Or stand under trees in the woods, Or talk by day with any one I love--or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love, Or sit at table at dinner with my mother, Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car, Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, Or animals feeding in the fields, Or birds--or the wonderfulness of insects in the air, Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down--or of stars shining so quiet and bright, Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring; Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best-- mechanics, boatmen, farmers, Or among the savans--or to the soiree--or to the opera, Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery, Or behold children at their sports, Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old woman, Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, Or my own eyes and figure in the glass; These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles, The whole referring--yet each distinct, and in its place.To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle, Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same, Every foot of the interior swarms with the same; Every spear of grass--the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women, and all that concerns them, All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.To me the sea is a continual miracle; The fishes that swim--the rocks--the motion of the waves--the ships, with men in them, What stranger miracles are there?
Walt Whitman
You're a miracle, Walker. Your fingers are. Your toes are. Your crushing sadness and guilt are.
Ron Koertge
It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never realized with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged.
Walter de la Mare
What other hope does life hold outBut the miraculous, the skilled and patientExecution, the teamwork, all the pain and worry every miracle involves?
Weldon Kees
To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.
François Mauriac
I have rubbed, knocked and brushed up against a thousand windows, trying to get an image.
Anthony Liccione
Well, I am something, Ma, you hissed, I am not nothing, I am somebody and I know what I want from life and I know what to do to get it. I will provide for myself.
Marlene Van Niekerk
After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret, if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves round her like the fingers of a hand.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
From tomorrow on, I will be a happy man; Grooming, chopping, and travelling all over the world. From tomorrow on, I will care foodstuff and vegetables, Living in a house toward the sea, with Spring Blossoms.
Hai Zi
This was what was wrong with me. All this time I had been trying to figure out the secrets of the universe, the secrets of my own body, of my own heart. All of the answers had always been so close and yet I had always fought them without even knowing it. From the minute I'd met Dante, I had fallen in love with him. I just didn't let myself know it, think it, feel it. My father was right. And it was true what my mother said. We all fight our own private wars.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
In ourselves our safety must be sought. By our own right hand it must be wrought.
William Wordsworth
And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?
Jalaluddin Rumi
You rile this gal and she'll go wildcat on your ass. Patti (Pat) Canella- Dockland murders/Ghosts of your past.
Alan Place
Or a ghost is a knot in the otherwise smooth flow of time, an electrical storm in a jewelry box, grief perfectly aligned. And sometimes a ghost is a shared thing; sometimes the entire population of a city or country will just happen to look in the mirror at the same time, and from then on there was a city in the sky, as all cities are if we consider that the sky reaches to the ground, and this city, too, thought it was alive, and the candles walked off by themselves.
Cole Swensen
...most words for ghost are pieces of mica that carefully layeredwill make a window out of fire. It's cold and the faces at the windowdo what faces usually do they open onto a genetic historythat looks up suddenly and it's the eyes everyone says you can't say that's not alive
Cole Swensen
You don't get the good shots sitting on your ass in the bad weather- Mark Johnson
Alan Place
If the creek predates the city deep in time, then is it right to identify the creek solely with the city? The city has forgotten the creek, as it's forgotten those who walk its side, but the creek didn't need to be known all that long time before the city ever was. Maybe now Hogan's Creek is too steeped in history to claim an independence grounded in prehistory, because the city has too deeply poisoned it for far too long. Then again, there was all that time the creek flowed and had no name. Without a name you belong solely to yourself.
Tim Gilmore
I am not in love with him, I am in love with ghosts. So is he, he's in love with ghosts.
Michael Ondaatje
Ghosts,” Doktor Messerli continued, “aren’t always the spirits of the human dead bound to the earth. A ghost can be the residual feeling that follows an act you have accomplished but feel bad about. Or the act itself. Something you’ve been or done that you cannot escape.
Jill Alexander Essbaum
I noticed that in a corner, across from where they ate with such innocent relish, sitting forlorn and abandoned, was the ghost of their son. He had lost both of his arms, one side of his face was squashed, and both his eyes had burst. He had bluish wings. He was the saddest ghost in the house.
Ben Okri
The ghosts will eat everything because the bellies of ghosts want the whole world, just to fill one tiny corner.
Catherynne M. Valente
It was the artists who finally gave their times and places significance. Paul felt the presence of their ghosts out in the world, just as felt them in his office and in his head. The air was full of them. They were everywhere and always would be.
Jonathan Galassi
What is a ghost? Something dead that seems to be alive. Something dead that doesn't know it's dead.
Richard Siken
They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone’s soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn’t share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence.
Dejan Stojanovic
So many horrid Ghosts.
William Shakespeare
Ghosts! […] I almost think we are all of us ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that ‘walks’ in us. It is all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we cannot shake them off. Whenever I take up a newspaper, I seem to see ghosts gliding between the lines. There must be ghosts all the country over, as thick as the sands of the sea. And then we are, one and all, so pitifully afraid of the light.
Henrik Ibsen
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
A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted.
Hope Mirrlees
It's not only what we have inherited from our father and mother that walks in us. It's all sorts of dead ideas, and lifeless old beliefs, and so forth. They have no vitality, but they cling to us all the same, and we can't get rid of them.
Henrik Ibsen
...everywhere I am is true.
Baisao
A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love." -Misia ― Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky
Chris Greenhalgh
A double bed can seem awfully small if your'e sharing it with someone you don't love." -Misia
Chris Greenhalgh
No such thing as humanity without flaws.
Hugo Ball
No, sir. I make it a rule of mine: The more it looks like Queer Street, the less I ask.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Once you face the truth, the knowledge both empowers you and sets you free.
Jay Woodman
Truth grows gradually in us, like a musician who plays a piece again and again until suddenly he hears it for the first time
Anne Michaels
You know what the worst thing about adults is? ...They're not always adults. But that's what I like about them.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The Sun can be your greatest gloom, or your greatest comforter, depending on how you view its shine.
Anthony Liccione
sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
Georges Duhamel
ADIEUThe glimmer farther away than the head The heart-skip On the slope where the air rolls its voice The spokes of the wheel the sun in the rut At the crossroads near the embankment a prayer Some words that are not heard Nearer the sky And on its steps the last square of light("Adieu")
Pierre Reverdy
Morning"SUNThat awakens ParisThe highest poplar on the bank On The Eiffel TowerA tricolored cockSings to the flapping of his wingsand several feathers fallAs it resumes its course The Seine looks between the bridgesFor her old routeAnd the Obelisk That has forgotten the Egyptian words Has not blossomed this yearSUN
Vicente Huidobro
To look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion.
N. Scott Momaday
That dandy, the sky, enters blue-suitedsun like a scotch in hand.
Cecilia Llompart
I am alive, I live, I breathe, I put my hand out, unfolded, into the sunlight.
Margaret Atwood
It was the week after Easter holidays, and he was journeying along with Smart the mare and the light spring-cart, watching the damp slopes of the hill-sides as they steamed in the warmth of the sun, which at this unsettled season shone on the grass with the freshness of an occasional inspector rather than as an accustomed proprietor.
Thomas Hardy
The Consul looked at the sun. But he had lost the sun: it was not his sun. Like the truth, it was well-nigh impossible to face; he did not want to go anywhere near it, least of all, sit in its light, facing it.
Malcolm Lowry
Everyone can get the gold of the Sun. (Tout le monde cueille - L'or du soleil)
Charles de Leusse
Water shines under the sun. But the sun dries it. (Eau brille sous soleil - Qui pourtant l’assèche.)
Charles de Leusse
The silverware shines if the sun. (L'argenterie brille - Si le soleil.
Charles de Leusse
The river overflows, not the sun. (Déborde le fleuve, - Pas le soleil)
Charles de Leusse
But there were certain early days in Casterbridge- days of firmamental exhaustion which followed angry south-westerly tempests-when, if the sun shone, the air was like velvet.
Thomas Hardy
Had there been no sun, life would have found some other means of illuminating the world. It is odd that we give the sun so much importance.
Anuradha Bhattacharyya
It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done.
Matthew Arnold
For the to see you shine, you must stay far way, for you are like the sun; when you’re too close, your light make them blind. And when you’re too far, they seek you. So let them seek you. They’re getting your light regardless, but appreciating your presence is different from recognizing your existence. If they don’t appreciate your presence, they may never recognize your absence.
Najwa Zebian
And of a Sunday swarm the folkUnder the honeysuckle vine, Quaffing, the while they talk and smoke, The sun, the melody, the wine.
Théophile Gautier
Hail the sun! the brightest of all that everDawned on the City of Seven Gates, City of Thebes!Hail the golden dawn over Dirce's riverRising to speed the flight of the white invaders Homeward in full retreat!" - Chorus
Sophocles
Look at the sun! It’s dry, it’s dead, it needs a drink, it wants blood! And I’ll give it blood!
Alfred de Musset
It is more or less a given that nothing is less favorable to clairvoyance than the bright sun: physical light and mental light coexist on very poor terms.
André Breton
Here I came to the very edge where nothing at all needs saying, everything is absorbed through weather and the sea, and the moon swam back, its rays all silvered, and time and again the darkness would be broken by the crash of a wave, and every day on the balcony of the sea, wings open, fire is born, and everything is blue again like morning.
Pablo Neruda