Quotes by Poets - Page 123

Astrology has no more useful function than this, to discover the inmost nature of a man and to bring it out into his consciousness, that he may fulfil it according to the law of light.
Aleister Crowley
It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of performing these small ceremonies regularly, and being as nearly accurate as possible with regard to the times. You must not mind stopping in the middle of a crowded thoroughfare—lorries or no lorries—and saying the Adorations; and you must not mind snubbing your guest—or your host—if he or she should prove ignorant of his or her share of the dialogue. It is perhaps because these matters are so petty and trivial in appearance that they afford so excellent a training. They teach you concentration, mindfulness, moral and social courage, and a host of other virtues.
Aleister Crowley
You are one of the few successful persons I know.""Me? Why?""You know precisely what you are doing and you do it well.""But I don't really do much of anything.""And of course the quantity means nothing to you, nor the weight others place upon your actions. In my eyes, that makes you a success.""By not giving a damn? But I do, you know.""Of course you do, of course you do! But it is a matter of style, an awareness of choice—
Roger Zelazny
Naught is there mightier than God;Yet hath He not the might to turnMy Will from willing what it will,My yearning as it needs must yearn?
Angelus Silesius
God has forgiven and still forgives us when we repent from our sins, an indication that we are not called to sin, but to live in accordance with His will.
Gugu Mona
Thou hast no right but to do thy will... For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.
Aleister Crowley
Why, even Death stands still and waits an hour for such a will.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
For pure will, unassuaged of purpose, delivered from the lust of result, is every way perfect.
Aleister Crowley
Now you see what kind of creatures we are, Hugh. Eating things alive. That's what we do. How can you have much respect for mankind, or any belief in the social struggle?
Malcolm Lowry
Our fate liesin the handsof the things we loveand sometimesthe things we loveare the thingsthat lead usto the fatal destructionof ourselves.
Robert M. Drake
She was the death of me,the beginning and the end.And I never understood her,for how could someoneSo beautiful be the causeof so much destructionafter all.
Robert M. Drake
By(e) pen, I've tried my hand at poetry; only to see how boring it is to me. That is, unless I get a chance to destroy each and every piece while doing it as I please.
Criss Jami
Happiness is the good life that is marked by flourishing well-being, joy, prosperity, peace, satisfaction, and pleasure.
Ogwo David Emenike
I wrote this book for the ghosts, who, because they're outside of time, are the only ones with time. After the last rereading (just now), I realize that time isn't the only thing that matters, time isn't the only source of terror. Pleasure can be terrifying too, and so can courage.
Roberto Bolaño
we not only wish to be pleased, but to be pleased in that particularway in which we have been accustomed to be pleased.
William Wordsworth
...what exactly is there in human existence that can lure you away from pleasure: peace of mind, a walk by the sea, moderation?
Kapka Kassabova
Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
William Shakespeare
I am too old a hand to be put off pleasure by even the certain prospect of not enjoying it.
Kingsley Amis
Lectio, quae placuit, decies repetita placebit.(What we read with pleasure we can read many times with pleasure.)
Horace
But whatever I am, I know that slipperiness isn't all of it. I know now that a studied evasiveness has its own limitations, its own ways of inhibiting certain forms of happiness and pleasure. The pleasure of abiding. The pleasure of insistence, persistence. The pleasure of obligation, the pleasure of dependency. The pleasures of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again--not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life.
Maggie Nelson
All pleasure is a vice because seeking pleasure is what everyone does in life, and the worst vice of all is to do what everyone else does.
Fernando Pessoa
Bodily delight is a sensory experience, not any different from pure looking or the pure feeling with which a beautiful fruit fills the tongue; it is a great, an infinite learning that is given to us, a knowledge of the world, the fullness and the splendor of all knowledge...the individual...can remember that all beauty in animals and plants is a silent, enduring form of love and yearning, and he can see the animal, as he sees plants, patiently and willingly uniting and multiplying and growing, not out of physical pleasure, not out of physical pain, but bowing to necessities that are greater than pleasure and pain, and more powerful than will and withstanding. If only human beings could more humbly receive this mystery---which the world is filled with...
Rainer Maria Rilke
It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us. [Italian: Necessita c'induce, e non diletto.]
Dante Alighieri
It sometimes happens that pleasure blows anywhere it damn well chooses.
Louis Aragón
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
I had a moral tutor, but never saw him (the only words of his I remember are 'The three pleasures of life -drinking, smoking, and masturbation')
Philip Larkin
Somewhere I’d heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the bounty this world offers me. I profit from great harvests in life and believe in the importance of seasons.
Roman Payne
If I didn't care for fun and such,I'd probably amount to much.But I shall stay the way I am,Because I do not give a damn.
Dorothy Parker
Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.
Walter Savage Landor
Altruism is for thosewho can't endure their desires.There's a worldas ambiguous as a moan,a pleasure moanour earnest neighborsmight think a crime.It's where we could live.I'll say I love you,Which will lead, of course,to disappointment,but those words unsaidpoison every next moment.I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.--Mon Semblable
Stephen Dunn
He that loves pleasure must for pleasure fall.
Christopher Marlowe
Write what you know, and what do you know better than your own secrets?
Raymond Carver
Writing is about allowing yourself to become a vessel of creativity. Writers are avatars of creation. We have tender hearts, and strong emotions. It's hard not to when you have a million different people's personalities playing out in your head.
Sai Marie Johnson
It's not pain. It's raw material.
Jo Bell
Rhythm, repetition, making patterns--these are not only important devices for shaping the strange and abstract instrument/object we call a poem or a story, but they are craved as well because of our primordial need for reassurance, the sense of security we get from moving over the known. A mystery doesn't lose power in revisiting. Writing is not just to know, it is also to console. We need to be reminded that we are part of the obscure rhythm of birth and decade. It is the humming that matters.
Breyten Breytenbach
Our lives make awesome stories, especially if you don't get too attached to the thread of your own narrative.
Michelle Tea
T.S. Eliot said to me 'There’s only one way a poet can develop his actual writing – apart from self-criticism & continual practice. And that is by reading other poetry aloud – and it doesn’t matter whether he understands it or not (i.e. even if it’s in another language.) What matters above all, is educating the ear.' What matters, is to connect your own voice with an infinite range of verbal cadences & sequences – and only endless actual experience of your ear can store all that in your nervous system. The rest can be left to your life & your character.
Ted Hughes
Make it so good and so clear that it doesn't need any further explanation.
Shel Silverstein
A man's grammar, like Caesar's wife, should not only be pure, but above suspicion of impurity.
Edgar Allan Poe
CREEPOther people have written about war. About how one plane sweeps over and the whole place is ablaze in minutes. About how a young man may kill another young many with perfect legality. I prefer to write about less sudden things. About how we inch further away without even noticing. And then it's too late. Or is it? No it's not too late to say sorry, we were wrong, let's try again to get along. No, it's not too late to quit lying, halt the greed, stop polluting air earth and seas. I prefer to write about less noisy things. About change happening so gradually that one day you just accept the world as different. And you don't question because you're old, and you don't feel like making waves, and anyway, they'd say you were insane.......
Jay Woodman
Human greed feeds a creed.
Volodymyr Knyr
Take taking from those that give & nobody anywhere will need any more such gifts.
Kenneth Patchen
I don't know which I hate most my bills or the money I pay them with...
Stanley Victor Paskavich
War, money and greed that is the modern heinous Trinity, and they are inseparable these days.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
And greed will breed harshness and cruelty.And wealth is a maze to confuse.Once a person is warm and well-suppered, how much of such wealth can they use?
Mitton Tony
Here is a greedy man who keeps to himselfThe beautiful pears ripe in his garden.
Bashō Matsuo
Your actions are catalysts to another’s actions. One could last a second, another could last to the end of mankind. Share kindness, plant the seed, help humanity overcome their greed.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Beware of those who are always hungry, for they will feed you to the wolves just to get paid.
Suzy Kassem
Hoarding kings are to be pitied in their lifetimewhen they can't take their richesto the
Taliesin
Those that much covet are with gain so fond,For what they have not, that which they possessThey scatter and unloose it from their bond,And so, by hoping more, they have but less;Or, gaining more, the profit of excessIs but to surfeit, and such griefs sustain,That they prove bankrupt in this poor-rich gain.
William Shakespeare
I was simultaneously elated and depressed, a common enough state of mind these days when people are offered a great deal of money to do something repugnant.
James Hamilton-Paterson
God may not give that instant dollar bill your seeking, but it's in the little change He brings, that will add to a dollar.
Anthony Liccione
What win I, if I gain the thing I seek?A dream, a breath, a froth of fleeting joy.Who buys a minute's mirth to wail a week?Or sells eternity to get a toy?For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?Or what fond beggar, but to touch the crown,Would with the sceptre straight be strucken down?
William Shakespeare
I changed. I have been turning into a different person since that half-minute.
Joy Davidman
I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thyeyes—and moreover, I will go with thee to thy uncle’s.
William Shakespeare
He was still experimenting with kissing girls even though he said he'd rather be kissing boys. That's exactly what he said. I didn't know exactly what to think about that, but Dante was going to be Dante and if I was going to be his friend, I would just have to learn to be okay with it.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Congratulations to your mom and dad for birth of a sweet child!Sorry that I couldn't wish them when you were born.
Hasil Paudyal
I rose from marsh mudalgae, equisetum, willows,sweet green, noisybirds and frogs.
Lorine Niedecker
ROSE of all Roses, Rose of all the World!tThe tall thought-woven sails, that flap unfurledtAbove the tide of hours, trouble the air,tAnd God’s bell buoyed to be the water’s care;tWhile hushed from fear, or loud with hope, a bandt With blown, spray-dabbled hair gather at hand.tTurn if you may from battles never done,tI call, as they go by me one by one,tDanger no refuge holds, and war no peace,tFor him who hears love sing and never cease,t Beside her clean-swept hearth, her quiet shade:tBut gather all for whom no love hath madetA woven silence, or but came to casttA song into the air, and singing pasttTo smile on the pale dawn; and gather yout Who have sought more than is in rain or dewtOr in the sun and moon, or on the earth,tOr sighs amid the wandering starry mirth,tOr comes in laughter from the sea’s sad lips;tAnd wage God’s battles in the long grey ships.t The sad, the lonely, the insatiable,tTo these Old Night shall all her mystery tell;tGod’s bell has claimed them by the little crytOf their sad hearts, that may not live nor die.tRose of all Roses, Rose of all the World!t You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurledtUpon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ringtThe bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.tBeauty grown sad with its eternitytMade you of us, and of the dim grey sea.tOur long ships loose thought-woven sails and wait,tFor God has bid them share an equal fate;tAnd when at last defeated in His wars,tThey have gone down under the same white stars,tWe shall no longer hear the little cryt Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.The Sweet Far Thing
W.B. Yeats
There was something dead in my heart.I tried to figure out what it was by the strength of the smell. I knew that it was not a lion or a sheep or a dog. Using logical deduction, I came to the conclusion that it was a mouse.I had a dead mouse in my heart.
Richard Brautigan