Quotes by Poets - Page 129

Of what need is teamwork without a common goal?
Ogwo David Emenike
In anything you set out to do, don't try your best. Do your best.
Ogwo David Emenike
What other goal could there be, then finding one's self within God and God within one's very Self? For as we know God, we also are known.
Vivian Amis
A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.
Paul Valéry
Translation is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes.
Günter Grass
It is in the nature of things to be drawn to the very experiences that will spoil our innocence, transform our lives, and give us necessary complexity and depth.
Thomas Moore
He turns the key.Presto!It opens this book of odd taleswhich transform the Brothers Grimm.Transform?As if an enlarged paper clipcould be a piece of sculpture.(And it could.)
Anne Sexton
You pass as a guy; I, as pregnant. Our waiter cheerfully tells us about his family, expresses delight in ours. On the surface, it may have seemed as though your body was becoming more and more “male,” mine, more and more “female.” But that’s not how it felt on the inside. On the inside, we were two human animals undergoing transformations beside each other, bearing each other loose witness. In other words, we were aging.
Maggie Nelson
How many nights must it takeone such as me to learnthat we aren’t, after all, madefrom that bird that flies out of its ashes,that for usas we go up in flames, our one workisto open ourselves, to bethe flames?
Galway Kinnell
And these thingsthat keep alive on departure know that you praise them; transient,they look to us, the most transient, to be their rescue.They want us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts,into -- O endlessly -- us! Whoever, finally, we may be.
Rainer Maria Rilke
For he will doAs he do doAnd there's no doing anything about it!
T.S Eliot
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,And that is the name that you never will guess;The name that no human research can discover--But the cat himself knows, and will never confess.When you notice a cat in profound meditation,The reason, I tell you, is always the same:His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplationOf the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:His ineffable effableEffanineffableDeep and inscrutable singular Name.
T.S Eliot
Even cats have questions – like “Can’t you see my bowl is empty?” or “Why don’t you turn off the ***! rain now?” From their perspective we are gods!
Jay Woodman
sleeping in the rain helps me forget things like I am going todie and you are going to die and the cats are going to diebut it's still good to stretch out and know you have arms andfeet and a head, hands, all the parts, even eyes to closeoncemore, it really helps to know these things, to know youradvantagesand your limitations, but why do the cats have to die, Ithink that theworld should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, justcats andrain, rain and cats, very nice, goodnight.
Charles Bukowski
Having played to her heart's content, Chibi would come inside and rest for a while. When she began to sleep on the sofa--like a talisman curled gently in the shape of a comma and dug up from a prehistoric archaeological site--a deep sense of happiness arrived, as if the house itself had dreamed this scene.
Takashi Hiraide
I wake upto my catsjudging me.They stareblanklyas if to say,"Is this whatyou had in mindfor your life?If it is, you maywant to considersleeping pills ora tall bridgebecause in our view,you're pathetic."Orthey're hungry.
Pamela August Russell
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.For he is the servant of the Living God, duly and daily serving him.For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with his elegant quickness...For when his day's work is done his business more properly begins.For he keeps the Lord's watch in the night against adversary.For he counteracts the powers of darkness by his electrical skin & glaring eyes.
Christopher Smart
Cats – by day the most docile of God’s creatures, every one of them in the night enlisting under the devil’s banner – took the place by storm after the human voice had ceased.
W.H. Davies
A cat is always on the wrong side of any door.
Pam Brown
The factories, the jails, the drunken days and nights, the hospitals have weakened and shaken me like a mouse in the mouth of a hip-cat: life.- from an Aug. 1965 letter to Jim Roman "On Cats
Charles Bukowski
The cat is the beutiful devil. And here we can use the word, even without the “a.”- from a Dec. 21 1960, a letter to Sheri Martinelli"On Cats
Charles Bukowski
I felt like a still live fish on ice in a butcher’s counter on Friday morning.- On Cats
Charles Bukowski
Who can believe that there is no soul behind those luminous eyes?
Théophile Gautier
Stuffed cats are able to creep more convincingly than live ones.
Günter Grass
Who shall tell the lady's griefWhen her Cat was past relief?Who shall number the hot tearsShed o'er her, beloved for years?Who shall say the dark dismayWhich her dying caused that day?
Christina Rossetti
For there is nothing sweeter than his peace when at rest.For there is nothing brisker than his life when in motion.
Christopher Smart
Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you're feeling bad, just look at the cats, you'll feel better, because they know that everything is, just as it is.
Charles Bukowski
Every cat knows how to keep his owner feeding them: You may scratch and bite ninety-nine times, but the hundredth time, you must leap into a lap and press your nose to their nose. Rules are for dogs.
Catherynne M. Valente
Cats, no less liquid than their shadows,Offer no angles to the wind.They slip, diminished, neat, through loopholesLess than themselves.
A.S.J. Tessimond
Looking back few friends had webut I've got him and he's got me.And when the golden minute comeswhen we no longer wake to smellthe river where the wild swans sailedthe orchard where the blossoms fell,we'll smile a little thinkin' of that.Me in my shirt-tails, him with his whiskersme and the cat.
Rod McKuen
I am sad for the dead and I am sad for the livingbut not for my 5 cats
Charles Bukowski
Sometimes I like her calm, unwild, gentle as a sleeping child,and wonder as she lies, a fur ring,curled upon my lap, unstirring -- is it me or Tibbles purring?
Ian Serraillier
The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat:If you offer him pheasant he would rather have grouse.If you put him in a house he would much prefer a flat,If you put him in a flat then he'd rather have a house.If you set him on a mouse then he only wants a rat,If you set him on a rat then he'd rather chase a mouse.Yes the Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat -And there isn't any call for me to shout it:For he will doAs he do doAnd there's no doing anything about it!
T.S Eliot
Bustopher Jones is not skin and bones — In fact, he's remarkably fat.He doesn't haunt pubs — he has eight or nine clubs,For he's the St. James's Street Cat!He's the Cat we all greet as he walks down the streetIn his coat of fastidious black:No commonplace mousers have such well-cut trousersOr such an impeccable back.In the whole of St. James's the smartest of names isThe name of this Brummell of Cats;And we're all of us proud to be nodded or bowed toBy Bustopher Jones in white spats!
T.S Eliot
He is quiet and small, he is blackFrom his ears to the tip of his tail;He can creep through the tiniest crackHe can walk on the narrowest rail.He can pick any card from a pack,He is equally cunning with dice;He is always deceiving you into believingThat he's only hunting for mice.He can play any trick with a corkOr a spoon and a bit of fish-paste;If you look for a knife or a forkAnd you think it is merely misplaced -You have seen it one moment, and then it is gawn!But you'll find it next week lying out on the lawn.And we all say: OH!Well I never!Was there everA Cat so cleverAs Magical Mr. Mistoffelees!
T.S Eliot
The white saucer like some full moon descendsAt last from the clouds of the table above;She sighs and dreams and thrills and glows,Transfigured with love.She nestles over the shining rim,Buries her chin in the creamy sea;Her tail hangs loose; each drowsy pawIs doubled under each bending knee.A long, dim ecstasy holds her life;Her world is an infinite shapeless white,Till her tongue has curled the last holy drop,Then she sinks back into the night,Draws and dips her body to heapHer sleepy nerves in the great arm-chair,Lies defeated and buried deepThree or four hours unconscious there.
Harold Monro
The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)He mewed until I heard him in the house.I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.What he says and what he sees are limited.My own response is even more constricted.I think, "It's lucky; what you have is too."What do you have except--well, me?I joke about it but it's not a joke;The house and I are all he remembers.Next month how will he guess that it is winterAnd not just entropy, the universePlunging at last into its cold decline?I cannot think of him without a pang.Poor rumpled thing, why don't you seeThat you have no more, really, than a man?Men aren't happy; why are you?
Randall Jarrell
Once [a cat] has given its love, what absolute confidence, what fidelity of affection! It will make itself the companion of your hours of work, of loneliness, or of sadness. It will lie the whole evening on your knee, purring and happy in your society, and leaving the company of creatures of its own society to be with you.
Théophile Gautier
It is a difficult matter to gain the affection of a cat. He is a philosophical, methodical animal, tenacious of his own habits, fond of order and neatness, and disinclined to extravagant sentiment. He will be your friend, if he finds you worthy of friendship, but not your slave.
Théophile Gautier
With Cats, some say, one rule is true:Don’t speak till you are spoken to.Myself, I do not hold with that —I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.But always keep in mind that heResents familiarity.I bow, and taking off my hat,Ad-dress him in this form: O Cat!But if he is the Cat next door,Whom I have often met before(He comes to see me in my flat)I greet him with an oopsa Cat!I think I've heard them call him James —But we've not got so far as names.
T.S Eliot
Gus is the Cat at the Theatre Door.His name, as I ought to have told you before,Is really Asparagus. That's such a fussTo pronounce, that we usually call him just Gus.His coat's very shabby, he's thin as a rake,And he suffers from palsy that makes his paw shake.Yet he was, in his youth, quite the smartest of Cats —But no longer a terror to mice or to rats.For he isn't the Cat that he was in his prime;Though his name was quite famous, he says, in his time.And whenever he joins his friends at their club(which takes place at the back of the neighbouring pub)He loves to regale them, if someone else pays,With anecdotes drawn from his palmiest days.For he once was a Star of the highest degree —He has acted with Irving, he's acted with Tree.And he likes to relate his success on the Halls,Where the Gallery once gave him seven cat-calls.But his grandest creation, as he loves to tell,Was Firefrorefiddle, the Fiend of the Fell.
T.S Eliot
He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair -Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair -But it's useless to investigate - Mcavity's not there!And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:'It must have been Macavity!' - but he's a mile away.You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,Or engaged in doing complicated long-division sums.Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.He always has an alibi, and one or two to spaer:At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the timeJust controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!
T.S Eliot
Cats ask plainly for what they want.
Walter Savage Landor
When the tea is brought at five o'clockAnd all the neat curtains are drawn with care,The little black cat with bright green eyesIs suddenly purring there.
Harold Monro
Human beings are drawn to cats because they are all we are not — self-contained, elegant in everything they do, relaxed, assured, glad of company, yet still possessing secret lives.
Pam Brown
Cats tell me without effort all that there is to know.
Charles Bukowski
Because I’m a cat. A big one, the Panther of Rough Storms, in fact. But still a cat. If there’s a saucer of milk to spill, I’d rather spill it than let it lie. If my mistress grows absent-minded and leaves a ball of yarn about, I’ll bat it between my paws, and unravel it. Because it’s fun. Because it’s what cats do best.
Catherynne M. Valente
God made the cat to give man the pleasure of stroking a tiger.
Joseph Méry
Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.
Jean Burden
Cats have it all - admiration, an endless sleep, and company only when they want it.
Rod McKuen
Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.
Walter Scott
One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.
Gwendolyn Brooks
It always gives me a shiver when I see a cat seeing what I can't see.
Eleanor Farjeon
Arise from sleep, old cat,And with great yawns and stretchings...Amble out for love
Kobayashi Issa
Cats can work out mathematically the exact place to sit that will cause most inconvenience.
Pam Brown
Every plant is an individual.Wrong again. We are not individuals at all, we are all connected. We are individuals the way each blossom on an apple tree is an individual.
Dale Pendell
for meobedience to another is the decay of self.for though every being is similareach being is differentand to herd our differencesunder one lawdegrades each self.
Charles Bukowski
To persons standing alone on a hill during a clear midnight such as this, the roll of the world is almost a palpable movement. To enjoy the epic form of that gratification it is necessary to stand on a hill at a small hour of the night, and, having first expanded with a sense of difference from the mass of civilized mankind, who are diregardful of all such proceedings at this time, long and quietly watch your stately progress through the stars.
Thomas Hardy
When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.
Criss Jami
They had been talking about astrology, a forbidden science that was not pursued in the cloister. Narcissus had said that astrology was an attempt to arrange and order the many different types of human beings according to their natures and destinies. At this point Goldmund had objected: "You're forever talking of differences - I've finally recognised a pet theory of yours. When you speak of the great difference that is supposed to exist between you and me, for instance, it seems to me that this difference is nothing but your strange determination to establish differences."Narcissus: "Yes. You've hit the nail on the head. That's it: to you, differences are quite unimportant; to me, they are what matters most. I am a scholar by nature; science is my vocation. And science is, to quote your words, nothing but the 'determination to establish differences.' Its essence couldn't be defined more accurately. For us, the men of science, nothing is as important as the establishment of differences; science is the art of differentiation. Discovering in every man that which distinguishes him from others is to know him.
Hermann Hesse