Quotes by Poets - Page 153

You can’t help who you are, but you can change who you want to be.
Benny Bellamacina
You are there with me, aren't you? I and my silences keep talking about you.
Avijeet Das
Sweet are the uses of adversity,Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;And this our life, exempt from public haunt,Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
William Shakespeare
Celebration is an act of impressing sadistic someone residing in you.
Santosh Kalwar
Adversity removes the friends prosperity has harvested.
C.J. Langenhoven
Forsake not the friendship of those who have been your staff in adversity, Forget not be benevolence of the blameless.
Thiruvalluvar
Sweet are the uses of adversity.
William Shakespeare
a man in earnest finds means, or if he cannot find he creates them. A vigorous purpose makes much out of little, breathes power into weak instruments, disarms difficulties, and even turns them into assistances. Every condition has means of progress, if we have spirit enough to use them.
William Ellery Channing
Adversity is neither friend nor foe. It is a common acquaintance that is desired less and rewarded most when embraced.
Carolyn Wells
Those doves below, the ones utterly cared for, never endangered ones, cannot know tenderness.
Rainer Maria Rilke
If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
Solon
Always be in command of your music. If life throws you a few bad notes or vibrations, don't let them interrupt or alter your song.
Suzy Kassem
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so wel
Anne Bradstreet
Sweet are the uses of adversityWhich, like the toad, ugly and venomous,Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
William Shakespeare
Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
We are like the herb which flourisheth most when trampled upon
Walter Scott
Fear breeds cowardice, and cowardice compels bravery.
Ogwo David Emenike
But as you get older, your courage attracts gunk and crusty things and dirt and fear and knowing how bad things can get and what pain feels like. By the time you're half-grown, your courage barely moves at all, it's so grunged up with living. So every once in a while, you have to scrub it up and get the works going or else you'll never be brave again. Unfortunately, there are not so many facilities in the world that proveide the kind of services we do. So most people go around with grimy machinery, when all it would take is a bit of spit and polish to make them paladins once more, bold knights and true.
Catherynne M. Valente
Don't you know Poole, you and I are about to place ourselves in a position of some peril?
Robert Louis Stevenson
...with a strong strong glow of courage, drank off the potion.
Robert Louis Stevenson
He felt ready to face the devil, and strutted in the ballroom with the swagger of a cavalier.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I thought of Bobby, of the last look he had given me, and at that moment I understood one of the differences between man and cat: man knows he's going to die, so he can get ready and be willing, even eager, to go. A cat knows the end is near, but that's all. He can't accept death: he can't trust in it; cats are perhaps too metaphysical an entity to need to believe in the idea of a beyond; a cat is his own god and man his creation.
Jaime Manrique
Most so-called brave people lack imagination. As though they can’t conceive of what would happen if something went wrong. The truly brave overcome their imagination and do what they have to do. 2
Charles Bukowski
O, that's a brave man! He writes brave verses, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely,
William Shakespeare
O, that's a brave man! He writes brave versrs, speaks brave words, swears brave oaths, and breaks them bravely,
William Shakespeare
Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.
William Shakespeare
He stopped the flyersAnd by his rare example made the cowardTurn terror into sport. As weeds beforeA vessel under sail, so men obeyedAnd fell below his stem. His sword, Death's stamp,Where it did mark, it took; from face to footHe was a thing of blood, whose every motionWas timed with dying cries. Alone he enteredThe mortal gate o' th' city, which he paintedWith shunless destiny; aidless came offAnd with a sudden reinforcement struckCorioles like a planet. Now all's his,When by and by the dim of war gan pierceHis ready sense; then straight his doubled spiritRequickened what in flesh was fatigate,And to the battle came he, where he didRun reeking o'er the lives of men as if'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we calledBoth field and city ours, he never stoodTo ease his breast with panting.
William Shakespeare
BRAVETo be brave is to behavebravely when your heart is faint.So you can be really brave only when you really ain't.
Piet Hein
Reaction timeTouch the underside of a penny you find on the streetDoesn't feel any different unless you close your eyesI can taste the copper in my mouth nowseeping from between my teethThere's an explanation I'm sureall this bloodit's from all the times I held the glass too closeAnd forgot to tip the dancerA storm just passedand like every other one that came before itI was left unharmedThe dogs are all barking and the catshiding in the basementAnd the sky is colored that bright yellow glowmakes it feel like you're wearing sunglassesthat you can't take offWherever you are nowit's not herebecause I missed itI missed the showI missed the curtain callAnd forever more I am cursedlike a blanket without a body to keep warm
Dave Matthes
I didn't recognize it as such then, because I was only thirteen years old, but later I found it a bit ironic that my first time seeing a woman in all her form and glory and saggy drug-tainted tits, arrived at the same exact time as my first introduction to death.
Dave Matthes
A coward is a servant of his fears.A hero enslaves his fears.
Lera Auerbach
Write on your doors the saying wise and old,"Be bold! be bold!" and everywhere-- "Be bold;Be not too bold!" Yet better the excessThan the defect; better the more than less;Better like Hector in the field to die,Than like a perfumed Paris turn and fly,
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I shall be as brave as a my Toad, he thought, for my Toad never hides under the bed when she is afraid of lightning or bats. She sticks out her tongue and eats them.
Catherynne M. Valente
~Posters with torn edges hanging from rotten walls~ The doctor told me something onceshe saidSTOP DRINKINGI slapped her across the face with thisNOI walked right out of that officewent right down to the holeI told the bartenderWHISKEY, MOTHERFUCKERhe poured and he pouredand I slapped my money down on that barthe man I had been driving around withhe just sort of sat there next to this hookershe probably had something rottenway down there between her legsher eyes told of no soulI emptied the bottle down my throatand ordered some chipsthe bartender told meTHEY'RE STALEand I give him a I DON'T FUCKIN' CARE,GIVE ME SOMETHIN'He slid me a ham sandwich dripping with cheap low-fat mayo and saidENJOYI went back to my roomand talked all nightso much conversationit turned the toilet bowl pale
Dave Matthes
Bullies don't like to fight, son. They like to win. Being afraid is normal. The only fight you really have to win is the one against the fear.
Kwame Alexander
...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church.
Dave Matthes
The brave man carves out his fortune, and every man is the sum of his own works.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple
Leonard Cohen
If you are too careful, you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
Gertrude Stein
But first on earth as vampire sentThy corpse shall from its tomb be rentThen gastly haunt thy native placeAnd suck the blood of all thy race
George Gordon Byron
Then Chameroy spoke. 'You always put the blame on opium, but as I see it the case of Freneuse is much more complicated. Him, an invalid? No - a character from the tales of Hoffmann! Have you never taken the trouble to look at him carefully? That pallor of decay; the twitching of his bony hands, more Japanese than chrysanthemums; the arabesque profile; that vampiric emaciation - has all of that never given you cause to reflect? In spite of his supple body and his callow face Freneuse is a hundred thousand years old. That man has lived before, in ancient times under the reigns of Heliogabalus, Alexander IV and the last of the Valois. What am I saying? That man is Henri III himself. I have in my library an edition of Ronsard - a rare edition, bound in pigskin with metal trimmings - which contains a portrait of Henri engraved on vellum. One of these nights I will bring the volume here to show you, and you may judge for yourselves. Apart from the ruff, the doublet and the earrings, you would believe that you were looking at the Due de Freneuse. As far as I'm concerned, his presence here inevitably makes me ill - and so long as he is present, there is such an oppression, such a heaviness...
Jean Lorrain
The famous courtesan Clarimonde died recently, as the result of an orgy which lasted eight days and eight nights. It was something infernally magnificent. They revived the abominations of the feasts of Belshazzar and Cleopatra. Great God! what an age this is in which we live! The guests were served by swarthy slaves speaking an unknown tongue, who to my mind had every appearance of veritable demons; the livery of the meanest among them might have served as a gala-costume for an emperor. There have always been current some very strange stories concerning this Clarimonde, and all her lovers have come to a miserable or a violent end. It has been said that she was a ghoul, a female vampire; but I believe that she was Beelzebub in person.
Théophile Gautier
BLOODY LIPSThe bloody woundOf the gladiatorGurgles out life's end.The cries of acclimations from the standsFill the sky with raging tigers.Waving their arms about to incite the massesThe aging notables add an air of dignity to the arena.Making their separate entriestheyKNEELover the still-warm corpsesOf the young. Their withered lips they poseUpon the fresh flowing woundsAnd, to prolong their lives – so they believe,Suck, ravenously suck out the blood, blood, blood.Fresh blood from the sunFlowing into filthy veinsAs into sewage pipes,And thus the Heart of the Nation is abandoned.
Visar Zhiti
The Murder Burger is served right here.You need not wait at the gate of Heaven for unleavened death. You can be a goner on this very corner. Mayonnaise, onions, dominance of flesh. If you wish to eat it you must feed it. Yall come back soon." -- You bet.
Stan Rice
SONG OF DAWNI saw the sun rise by accident.It was a horrible sight.Annoyed by its splendor, I sought refugein a moist pillow, and lay there, alone,at the dawn of another day,that brought me closer to another death,pondering the vanity of my solitude,the vanity of procrastination,and the tiresome inevitability of waking upagain the same person.It might still be possible to change,but obstinately I remain the same,hoping that others might take solacein my consistency.But perhaps they take no solace in it,perhaps they too find it tedious.
John Tottenham
It was a night of early spring,The winter-sleep was scarcely broken;Around us shadows and the windListened for what was never spoken.Though half a score of years are gone,Spring comes as sharply now as then—But if we had it all to doIt would be done the same again.It was a spring that never came;But we have lived enough to knowThat what we never have, remains;It is the things we have that go.
Sara Teasdale
I made an oath to myself:as long as I liveas long as my soul remains in this bodyI won't deviate from the right waybut later I looked to my left and then to my rightand I saw our beloved everywherehow could I make a wrong turn?
Jalaluddin Rumi
I've come to accept that parts of life are constant, that just because something happens on two different days doesn't make it a goddamn miracle.
Kevin Powers
She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar's great-grandchildren. Indeed, for all the Minsisster of Revenue's impatience with her, she was his regret.And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool.
Vikram Seth
I am your little ram,burying his muzzle in thick grass of your pasture,folded by you at night, herded by day,a dedicated dog nipping at my hocks.The day will come for you to drawthe bright sickle of the moonacross my wooly throat.Do it with love, without regret.
Mark Wunderlich
Because any guilt the sizeof a speck of dust, or shame,can crush even the best of men,in mountains of weight
Phil Volatile
Nought’s had, all’s spent, where our desire is got without content.
William Shakespeare
My animal howlsMy angel's upsetBut I'm not allowedA trace of regret
Leonard Cohen
he should have done all things otherwise: poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of the irrevocable past.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Consider the odd morphology of regret.
Wallace Stevens
In hours of bliss we oft have met:They could not always last;And though the present I regret,I'm grateful for the past.
William Congreve
The only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldy enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.
Ted Hughes
There is much to be said for cherry blossoms, but they seem so flighty. They are so quick to run off and leave you. And then just when your regrets are the strongest the wisteria comes into bloom, and it blooms on into the summer. There is nothing quite like it. Even the color is somehow companionable and inviting.
Murasaki Shikibu
The tragedy of Dionysus: Wear a black robe at night, and white you’ll wear by morning; but wear a purple robe to the midnight feast, and when you wake you’ll dress in black to mourn your soul deceased.
Roman Payne
Some of our children are our justifications and some are but our regrets.
Kahlil Gibran