Quotes by Poets - Page 117

ESPN, is having the ability to foretell future outcomes in sports.
Anthony Liccione
Jack reads too many books. He thinks we're going to drive all year and have great adventures.
Steven Herrick
I do not read for I have renounced life, I read because one life is just not enough for me.
Abbas Al-Akkad
Christians should read and meditate the upon the Word of God which sustains and directs their spiritual lives.
Gugu Mona
Nothing threatens a corrupt system more than a free mind.
Suzy Kassem
There is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath...
Herman Melville
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.
William Blake
The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, although even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching.
W.B. Yeats
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’s said that the shuffling of the cards is the earth, and the pattering of the cards is the rain, and the beating of the cards is the wind, and the pointing of the cards is the fire. That’s of the four suits. But the Greater Trumps, it’s said, are the meaning of all process and the measure of the everlasting dance.
Charles Williams
These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.
Rabindranath Tagore
A bitter awareness that everything is a sensation of mine and at the same time something external, something not in my power to change. Ah, how often my own dreams have raised up before me as things, not to replace reality but to declare themselves its equal
Pessoa
I'm dreaming of a month of Sundays.
Steven Herrick
But if the Dream Kings were mine, what would I have to dream about? If I possessed the impossible landscapes, what would remain of the impossible?
Fernando Pessoa
I have to choose what I detest - either dreaming which my intelligence hates, or action, which my sensibility loathes; either action, for which I wasn't born, or dreaming, for which no one was born. Detesting both, I choose neither; but since I must on occasion either dream or act, I mix the two things together.
Fernando Pessoa
I'm not a fool, I knew from the beginningwhat couldn't happen. What couldn't
Frank Bidart
To dream! Such dreams certainly make life more worth living... and only dreams can do that for me.
Jean Lorrain
Dreaming's great as long as you wake up now and again
Benny Bellamacina
Contemplating a flame perpetuates a primordial reverie. It separates us from the world and enlarges our world as dreamers. In itself the flame is a major presence, but being close to it makes us dream of far away, too far away. The flame is there, feeble and tiny, struggling to stay in existence, and the dreamer goes on to dream of elsewhere, losing his own being by dreaming on a grand, on a too grand scale by dreaming of the world.
Gaston Bachelard
I hesitate in everything, often without knowing why. How often I've sought – as my own version of the straight line, seeing it in my mind as the ideal straight line – the longest distance between two points. I've never had a knack for the active life. I've always taken wrong steps that no one else takes; I've always had to make an effort to do what comes naturally to other people. I've always wanted to achieve what others have achieved almost without wanting it. Between me and life there were always sheets of frosted glass that I couldn't tell were there by sight or by touch; I didn't live that life or that dimension. I was the daydream of what I wanted to be, and my dreaming began in my will: my goals were always the first fiction of what I never was.
Fernando Pessoa
I'm almost convinced that I'm never awake. I'm not sure if I'm not in fact dreaming when I live, and living when I dream, or if dreaming and living are for me intersected, intermingled things that together form my conscious self.
Fernando Pessoa
(Dreams drain the spirit if we dream too long.)
Theodore Roethke
What if it's the thereand not the herethat I long for?The wanderand not the wait,the magicin the lost feetstumbling downthe faraway streetand the way the moonnever hangsquite the same.
Tyler Knott Gregson
A 'dreamer' is one possesses the gift of dreaming by day. Sure, many dream at night, but don’t also small babies and animals dream at night? To dream by day and dream aloud: Is this not the reward for all the troubles we humans must face?
Roman Payne
Beguildy looked at me over the rim of a great measure of mead. 'Saddle your dreams afore you ride 'em, my wench,' he said.
Mary Webb
Like every dreamer, I've always felt that my calling was to create. Since I've never been able to make an effort or carry out an intention, creation for me has always meant dreaming, wanting or desiring, and action has meant desiring of the acts I wish I could perform.
Fernando Pessoa
Reveries of idealization develop, not by letting oneself be taken in by memories, but by constantly dreaming the values of a being whom one would love. And that is the way a great dreamer dreams his double. His magnified double sustains him." - Gaston Bachelard, "Reveries on Reverie (Anima - Animus)", The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos, Page 88
Gaston Bachelard
There are those who speak and those who dream.
Dejan Stojanovic
What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child.
Fernando Pessoa
Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin' comin' up glowin' Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin' in the shade, just ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine. Pure gold corn there, Blowin' in the warm air. Ol' crow nibblin' on the amnythyst seeds. In between the diamonds, Ol' man Simon crawls about pullin' out platinum weeds. Pink pearl berries, all you can carry, put 'em in a bushel and haul 'em into town. Up in the tree there's opal nuts and gold pears- Hurry quick, grab a stick and shake some down. Take a silver tater, emerald tomater, fresh plump coral melons. Hangin' in reach. Ol' man Simon, diggin' in his diamonds, stops and rests and dreams about one... real... peach.
Shel Silverstein
The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created by the firelight was like the planet Earth - a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows
Hope Mirrlees
Once that ship has sailed don't hold on to the anchor
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Hell, I'd even failed with women. Three wives. Nothing really wrong each time. It all got destroyed by petty bickering. Railing about nothing. Getting pissed-off over anything and everything. Day by day, year by year, grinding. Instead of helping each other you just sliced away, picked at this or that. Goading. Endless goading. It became a cheap contest. And once you got into it, it became habitual. You couldn't seem to get out. You almost didn't want to get out. And then you did get out. All the way.
Charles Bukowski
dear samanthai’m sorrywe have to get a divorcei know that seems like an odd way to start a love letter but let me explain:it’s not youit sure as hell isn’t meit’s just human beings don’t love as well as insects doi love you.. far too much to let what we have be ruined by the failings of our speciesi saw the way you looked at the waiter last nighti know you would never DO anything, you never do but..i saw the way you looked at the waiter last nightdid you know that when a female fly accepts the pheromones put off by a male fly, it re-writes her brain, destroys the receptors that receive pheromones, sensing the change, the male fly does the same. when two flies love each other they do it so hard, they will never love anything else ever again. if either one of them dies before procreation can happen both sets of genetic code are lost forever. now that… is dedication.after Elizabeth and i broke up we spent three days dividing everything we had bought togetherlike if i knew what pots were mine like if i knew which drapes were mine somehow the pain would go awaythis is not trueafter two praying mantises mate, the nervous system of the male begins to shut downwhile he still has control over his motor functionshe flops onto his back, exposing his soft underbelly up to his lover like a giftshe then proceeds to lovingly dice him into tiny cubesspooning every morsel into her mouthshe wastes nothingeven the exoskeleton goesshe does this so that once their children are born she has something to regurgitate to feed themnow that.. is selflessnessi could never do that for youso i have a new plani’m gonna leave you nowi’m gonna spend the rest of my life committing petty injusticesi hope you do the samei will jay walk at every opportunity i will steal things i could easily affordi will be rude to strangersi hope you do the samei hope reincarnation is reali hope our petty crimes are enough to cause us to be reborn as lesser creatures i hope we are reborn as fliesso that we can love each other as hard as we were meant to.
Jared Singer
I lifted him out. I held him. I held that half of him.
Raymond Carver
Not everyone was privileged to see another sunrise like you did, so before you start complaining remember that the breath of life isn't for sale.
Gugu Mona
I don't believe we shall ever again have any form of society in which men will be free. One should not hope for it. One should not hope for anything. Hope is invented by politicians to keep the electorate happy.
Pier Paolo Pasolini
Gay people were seen as magical, too. I mean, like in many cultures, men were viewed as warriors and women were viewed as caregivers. But gay people, being both male and female, were seen as both warriors and caregivers. Gay people could do anything. They were like Swiss Army knives!
Sherman Alexie
And thus I wonder about so many gay men I’ve met since, pillars of the community, out to everyone else but Mom, who still refer to their lovers as something between a roommate and a valet. Just who is being protected here, and who thinks queer is wrong?
Paul Monette
Since Drake told me that day in the wooded lot,while the leaves agreed with gravity and left the trees,that he liked boys instead of girls, it's been easier to love him. Loving him feels like counting or usingthe phone or something else that's effortless. I'm likea leaf with nothing to do but fall.
Karen Finneyfrock
Lots of people hate gay people.You can tell who they are because they start sentences with, "It's not like I hate gay people.
Ali Liebegott
The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater because he is trying to kill you, and you deserve it, you do, and you know this, and you are ready to die in this swimming pool because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means your life is over anyway. You’re in eighth grade. You know these things. You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do long division, and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you didn't do, because you are weak and hollow and it doesn't matter anymore.
Richard Siken
I never read prefaces, and it is not much good writing things just for people to skip. I wonder other authors have never thought of this.
E Nesbit
There is in Albert Camus’ literary craftsmanship a seductive intelligence that could almost make a reader dismiss his philosophical intentions if he had not insisted on making them so clear.
Aberjhani
The novelist is condemned to wander all his life. Homeless and blind like Oedipus he wanders until death. And so let us protect the novelist and adore him, with pity, honor, and love.
Roman Payne
No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.
Robert Frost
I’m contemplating if book sales and promotions can actually be rigged like so many other things in our everyday lives?
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste than Herman Melville.
D.H. Lawrence
... in art nothing is more secondary than the author's intentions.
Jorge Luis Borges
Seriously, when you see a new book fresh on the stand and in big letters it says “A Million Copies Sold,” did you ever wonder who bought them?
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Publishing would be so wonderful without those wretched authors.
Jonathan Galassi
I never reread what I've written. I'm far too afraid to feel ashamed of what I've done.
Jorge Luis Borges
Writing is a conduit. It opens up a passageway into the past. Not just for the writer, but for the reader too. Both readers and writer are linked by the commonality of human experience.
Lang Leav
...a great man who is vicious will only be a great doer of evil, and a rich man who is not liberal will be only a miserly beggar; for the possessor of wealth is not made happy by possessing it, but by spending it - and not by spending as he please but by knowing how to spend it well. To the poor gentleman there is no other way of showing that he is a gentleman than by virtue, by being affable, well-bred, courteous, gentle-mannered and helpful; not haughty, arrogant or censorious, but above all by being charitable...and no one who sees him adorned with the virtues I have mentioned, will fail to recognize and judge him, though he know him not, to be of good stock.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature—but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind. But of an end to their argument, we shall have none, not ever, until the end of all.
Catherynne M. Valente
Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.
John Milton
Mortals that would follow me, Love virtue, she alone is free, She can teach ye how to climb Higher than they sphery chime; Or if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.
John Milton
PRESCRIPTION A bitof virtuewill neverhurt you.
Piet Hein
It was inevitable under a monarchy, however benevolent the monarch. The old virtues disappear. Independence and frankness are at a discount. Complacent anticipation of the monarch's wishes is then the greatest of all virtues. One must either be a good monarch like yourself, or a good courtier like myself—either an Emperor or an idiot.
Robert Graves
The difference is too nice - Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.
Alexander Pope