Quotes by Poets - Page 135

The Marquis de V... - whose falsetto voice and little watery eyes I have always detested - was saying to me with a wicked smile: 'Then again, the master gymnast might break his neck at any moment. What he is doing now is very dangerous, my dear, and the pleasure you take in his performance is the little frisson that danger affords you. Wouldn't it be thrilling, if his sweaty hand failed to grip the bar? The velocity acquired by his rotation about the bar would break his spine quite cleanly, and perhaps a little of the cervical matter might spurt out as far as this! It would be most sensational, and you would have a rare emotion to add to the field of your experience - for you collect emotions, don't you? What a pretty stew of terrors that man in tights stirs up in us!'Admit that you almost wish that he will fall! Me too. Many others in the auditorium are in the same state of attention and anguish. That is the horrible instinct of a crowd confronted with a spectacle which awakens in it the ideas of lust and death. Those two agreeable companions always travel together! Take it from me that at the very same moment - see, the man is now holding on to the bar by his fingertips alone - at the very same moment, a good number of the women in these boxes are ardently lusting after that man, not so much for his beauty as for the danger he courts.'The voice subtly changed its tone, suddenly becoming more interested. 'You have singularly pale eyes this evening, my dear Freneuse. You ought to give up bromides and take valerian instead. You have a charming and curious soul, but you must take command of its changes. You are too ardently and too obviously covetous, this evening, of the death - or at least the fall - of that man.'I did not reply. The Marquis de V... was quite right. The madness of murder had taken hold of me again; the spectacle had me in its hallucinatory grip. Straitened by a penetrating and delirious anguish, I yearned for that man to fall.There are appalling depths of cruelty within me.
Jean Lorrain
And I say,I crash in to things in the darkEven when the lights are onAnd I am wrong more often than I am writingAnd even then, I am often wrongBut when my friends are in the bathroom at the barRolling dollar bills in to telescopes,Claiming they can see God,I will come to you
Andrea Gibson
I hate the thing is called enjoyment: Besides it is a dull employment,It cuts off all that's life and fireFrom that which may be termed desire;Just like the bee whose sting is goneConverts the owner to a drone.
John Wilmot
Late-Flowering LustMy head is bald, my breath is bad,Unshaven is my chin,I have not now the joys I hadWhen I was young in sin.I run my fingers down your dressWith brandy-certain aimAnd you respond to my caressAnd maybe feel the same.But I've a picture of my ownOn this reunion night,Wherein two skeletons are shewnTo hold each other tight;Dark sockets look on emptinessWhich once was loving-eyed,The mouth that opens for a kissHas got no tongue inside.I cling to you inflamed with fearAs now you cling to me,I feel how frail you are my dearAnd wonder what will be--A week? or twenty years remain?And then--what kind of death?A losing fight with frightful painOr a gasping fight for breath?Too long we let our bodies cling,We cannot hide disgustAt all the thoughts that in us springFrom this late-flowering lust.
John Betjeman
When the devout religion of mine eyeMaintains such falsehood, then turn tears to fires,And these, who, often drowned, could never die,Transparent heretics, be burnt for liars!One fairer than my love? The all-seeing sunNe'er saw her match since first the world begun.
William Shakespeare
You can't speak to him, he said, if you speak to him, if you give any sign to him at all, he will come back; he has to stop existing for you.
Garth Greenwell
Lust and the English make no sense to me.
Paul Monette
But virtue, as it never will be moved,Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven,So lust, though to a radiant angel linked,Will sate itself in a celestial bedAnd prey on garbage.
William Shakespeare
The young habitually mistake lust for love, they're infested with idealism of all kinds.
Margaret Atwood
When you have indulged a lust, your wing drops off;you become lame, abandoned by a fantasy.…People fancy they are enjoying themselves,but they are really tearing out their wingsfor the sake of an illusion.
Jalaluddin Rumi
If they substituted the word 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.
Sylvia Plath
We'll choose knowledge no matter what, we'll maim ourselves in the process, we'll stick our hands into the flames for it if necessary. Curiosity is not our only motive; love or grief or despair or hatred is what drives us on. We'll spy relentlessly on the dead; we'll open their letters, we'll read their journals, we'll go through their trash, hoping for a hint, a final word, an explanation, from those who have deserted us--who've left us holding the bag, which is often a good deal emptier than we'd supposed.
Margaret Atwood
He wants to see, he wants to know, only to see and know. I'm aware that it is this mentality, this curiosity, which is responsible for the hydrogen bomb and the imminent demise of civilization and that we would all be better off if we were still at the stone-worshipping stage. Though surely it is not this affable inquisitiveness that should be blamed.
Margaret Atwood
To see persons looking with children's eyes at any ordinary scenery, is a proof that they possess the charming faculty of drawing new sensations from an old experience...
Thomas Hardy
For Tolstoy . . . anything that human beings do has its glory. . . . I think he can be said to have hated nothing that ever happened.
Mark Van Doren
I’m curious about everyone, hungry for everything, greedy for all ideas. My awareness that not everything can be seen, not everything read and not everything thought torments me like the loss of ..... But I don’t see with fixed attention, I don’t read with great care, and I don’t think with continuity. I’m an ardent and inconsequential dilettante in everything. My soul is too weak to sustain the force of its own enthusiasm. Made out of ruins of the unfinished, I’m definable as a landscape of resignations.
Fernando Pessoa
Who now would thrust enquiry on / Beyond necessity of desire?
Geoffrey Hill
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.
Dorothy Parker/Ellen Parr
Stop, stop pretty water!"Said Mary one dayTo a frolicsome brookThat was running away."You run on so fast!I wish you would stay;My boat and my flowersYou will carry away.But I will run after:Mother says that I may;For I would know whereYou are running way."So Mary ran on;But I have heard say,That she never could findWhere the brook ran away.
Eliza Lee Follen
Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably won’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly.
Diane Ackerman
Truly, Mallow yearned to know everything. Curiosity was part of her, like her short blond hair and bitten fingernails.
Catherynne M. Valente
Why? is the boy's motto, why does, why is, why not? Food, weather, time, fires, sea and season, clothes and cars and people; it's all grist to the mill of why.
Keri Hulme
Today is a fantasy for tomorrow has gone and yesterday is here!
Munia Khan
There you have it! - How they anticipate my wishes, how they grant friendship's little attentions, which are worth a thousand times more than breathtaking presents that merely prove the giver's vanity and humiliate us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Infinite mercy flows continuallyBut you're asleep and can't see it.The sleeper's robe goes on drinking river waterWhile he frantically hunts mirages in dreamsAnd runs continually here and there shouting,"There'll be water further on, I know!"It's this false thinking that blocks himFrom the path that leads to himself,By always saying, "Further on!"He's become estranged from "here":Because of a false fantasyHe's driven from reality.
Jalaluddin Rumi
When I meet you, in that moment, I am no longer a part of your future. I start quickly becoming part of your past. But in that instant, I get to share a part of your present. And you get to share a part of mine. And that is the greatest present of all.
Sarah Kay
Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.
Margaret Atwood
Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.
Bertolt Brecht
As for Iago’s jealousy, one cannot believe that a seriously jealous man could behave towards his wife as Iago behaves towards Emilia, for the wife of a jealous husband is the first person to suffer. Not only is the relation of Iago and Emilia, as we see it on stage, without emotional tension, but also Emilia openly refers to a rumor of her infidelity as something already disposed of.Some such squire it wasThat turned your wit, the seamy side withoutAnd made you to suspect me with the Moor.At one point Iago states that, in order to revenge himself on Othello, he will not rest till he is even with him, wife for wife, but, in the play, no attempt at Desdemona’s seduction is made. Iago does not encourage Cassio to make one, and he even prevents Roderigo from getting anywhere near her.Finally, one who seriously desires personal revenge desires to reveal himself. The revenger’s greatest satisfaction is to be able to tell his victim to his face – "You thought you were all-powerful and untouchable and could injure me with impunity. Now you see that you were wrong. Perhaps you have forgotten what you did; let me have the pleasure of reminding you."When at the end of the play, Othello asks Iago in bewilderment why he has thus ensnared his soul and body, if his real motive were revenge for having been cuckolded or unjustly denied promotion, he could have said so, instead of refusing to explain.
W.H. Auden
Oh, how I longed to burst through the doors and go walking through the streets, with my hands open, like weapons!
Marcel Béalu
But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge.
Margaret Atwood
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps,Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth,Sweet is revenge--especially to women
George Gordon Byron
I thought my heart was pure. We do like to have such good opinions of our own motives when we're about to do something harmful, to someone else.
Margaret Atwood
Revenge tightens the heart as much as the jaw. (La vengeance serre le cœur - Autant que la mâchoire)
Charles de Leusse
Revenge is a feast for thegods!
Walter Scott
No, this is my revenge. I am giving you just what you want, I'm releasing you. And yet I''m really not. I'll inflict torments on you, subtle torments, day after day, year after year- that's why you're necessary to me.
Buddhadeva Bose
I shouldn't have taken a vow of silence, I told myself. What did I want? Nothing much. Just a memorial. But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge.
Margaret Atwood
Thou calledst me a dog before thou hadst a cause,But since I am a dog, beware my fangs.
William Shakespeare
I'll find a day to massacre them allAnd raze their faction and their family,The cruel father and his traitorous sons,To whom I sued for my dear son's life,And make them know what 'tis to let a queenKneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.
William Shakespeare
Hot from hell. Caesar's spirit raging in revenge. Cry,havoc! And let slip the dogs of war.
William Shakespeare
Suddenly revenge is so close he can actually taste it. It tastes like steak, rare.
Margaret Atwood
YOUNG MORTIMER:Thou proud disturber of thy country's peace,Corrupter of thy king, cause of these broils,Base flatterer, yield! and were it not for shame,Shame and dishonour to a soldier's name,Upon my weapon's point here should'st thou fall,And welter in thy gore.LANCASTER:Monster of men!That, like the Greekish strumpet, train'd to armsAnd bloody wars so many valiant knights;Look for no other fortune, wretch, than death!King Edward is not here to buckler thee.
Christopher Marlowe
One thing at a time,' said the Boy. 'You must be patient. This is a day of hope and wild revenge. Do not interrupt me. I am a courier from another world. I bring you golden words.Listen!' said the Boy. 'Where I come from there is no more fear. But there is a roaring and a bellowing and a cracking of bones. And sometimes there is silence when, lolling on your thrones, your slaves adore you.
Mervyn Peake
To hell, allegiance! Vows, to the blackest devil!Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit!I dare damnation
William Shakespeare
At this hourLie at my mercy all mine enemies.
William Shakespeare
Time and Nemesis will do that which I would not, were it in my power remote or immediate. You will smile at this piece of prophecy - do so, but recollect it: it is justified by all human experience. No one was ever even the involuntary cause of great evils to others, without a requital: I have paid and am paying for mine - so will you.
George Gordon Byron
His jest shall savour but a shallow wit, when thousands more weep than did laugh it.
William Shakespeare
Beware the fury of a patient man.
John Dryden
Revenge, the sweetest morsel to the mouth that ever was cooked in hell.
Walter Scott
It feels as though it were just yesterday Grandfather exited my life like a bullet, leaving a bleeding hole behind.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Asif Ali maneuvers the gleaming Mercedes down the labyrinthine lanes of Old Kolkata with consummate skill, but his passengers do not notice how smoothly he avoids potholes, cows and beggars, how skilfully he sails through aging yellow lights to get the Bose family to their destination on time. This disappoints Asif only a little. In his six years of chauffeuring the rich and callous, he has realized that, to them, servants are invisible.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Her suspense was terrible.
Thomas Hardy
Eternity is a ham and two people” (also given as “Eternity is two people and a ham") is an old quip from the days when a ham was huge—far more than two people could finish. Irma Rombauer mentions this line in her famous cookbook, The Joy of Cooking.
Dorothy Parker
I had to be the world's biggest loser, writing about hair, and stuff about my body. No wonder I stopped keeping a journal. It was like keeping a record of my own stupidity. Why would I want to do that?
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
We know already ample experience that it does not require much cleverness or much learning to be a governor, for there are a hundred round about us that scarcely know how to read.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
I believe you to be strictly honorable.'He thoughtfully emptied his cup. 'I wish I could add you were intelligent,' he went on, knocking on his head with his knuckles.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I want to tell you something but good tasteRestrains me
Sappho van Lesbos
Danger will come upon us when it will. We can't stop it. We can only try to be prepared. There's no point in looking ahead to that danger and suffering its effects even before it comes to us.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni