Quotes by Poets - Page 194

I do so love hearing people speak passionately on any subject, other than themselves.
Ged Thompson Liverpool Poet
It often seems as though the silent, humble servant is secretly wiser and more discerning than the haughty master; yet through dutiful (and sometimes insecure) surrender he continues to serve and carry out petty orders in loyal acquiescence.
Criss Jami
People who are easily embarrassed – those who blush too often and too soon – usually end up retreating from excellence.
Joseph Bottum
I write poetry, worry, smile,laughsleepcontinue for a whilejust like most of usjust like all of us;sometimes I want to hug allMankind on earthand say,god damn all this that they've brought down on us,we are brave and goodeven though we are selfishand kill each other andkill ourselves,we are the peopleborn to kill and die and weep in dark roomsand love in dark rooms,and wait, andwait and wait and wait.we are the people.we are nothingmore.
Charles Bukowski
CARDINAL WOLSEYSo farewell to the little good you bear me.Farewell! a long farewell, to all my greatness!This is the state of man: to-day he puts forthThe tender leaves of hopes; to-morrow blossoms,And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surelyHis greatness is a-ripening, nips his root,And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,This many summers in a sea of glory,But far beyond my depth: my high-blown prideAt length broke under me and now has left me,Weary and old with service, to the mercyOf a rude stream, that must for ever hide me.Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye:I feel my heart new open'd. O, how wretchedIs that poor man that hangs on princes' favours!There is, betwixt that smile we would aspire to,That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin,More pangs and fears than wars or women have:And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer,Never to hope again
William Shakespeare
People need to stand up for their wrongs, as they stand up for their rights.
Anthony Liccione
If you think the most courageous and difficult thing you can do is stubbornly stand your ground, try graciously giving in.
Richelle E. Goodrich
For if any man thinks that he is alone is wise--that in speech, or in mind, he hath no peer--such a soul, when laid open, is ever found empty.
Sophocles
Humility is the acknowledgement that without God you wouldn't have made it thus far.
Gift Gugu Mona
Have you ever noticed how the most intriguing individual in the room seems content to listen sooner than speak?
Richelle E. Goodrich
I deserted the world and sought solitude because I became tired of rendering courtesy to those multitudes who believe that humility is a sort of weakness, and mercy a kind of cowardice, and snobbery a form of strength.
Kahlil Gibran
For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about as far from the sea as is possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean. Maybe that child was right when he told me that the world is upside-down here, and this is where angels drown.
Kathleen Norris
Great artists are a little too gifted to be bound by boxes and labels, and in saying that, the label 'artist' is to be used lightly.
Criss Jami
Even Kings and emperors with heaps of wealth and vast dominion cannot compare with an ant filled with the love of God.
Guru Nanak
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be; Am an attendant lord, one that will do To swell a progress, start a scene or two, Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool, Deferential, glad to be of use, Politic, cautious, and meticulous; Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse; At times, indeed, almost ridiculous— Almost, at times, the Fool.
T.S Eliot
Humility is, in a sense, admitting how egotistical you are.
Criss Jami
Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.
William Shakespeare
I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.
Hermann Hesse
I'd rather have names to hurt me, than my bones broken with sticks and stones.
Anthony Liccione
If you really want to hurt, find someone who loves you.
C.J. Langenhoven
You pierce me with a look, a word, a gesture. And yet those same weapons could shield me from hurt if you so choose.
Richelle E. Goodrich
The louder you bellyache, the longer your stomach will hurt.
Richelle E. Goodrich
What was it like to lose him?" Asked Sorrow. There was a long pause before I responded:It was like hearing every goodbye ever said tome—said all at once.
Lang Leav
Love, is a Bloody Razor BladeLove came like fire from aboveand disappeared like a wet dream,underneath a leaky kitchen sinkFor weeks it went drip, drip, drip…until it could be, eventually fixedIt took a long time to depreciateall the things I never had to sayBut there are only so many things that make sense at the endThe rest is merely X-Acto knife love, andLove, is a bloody razor blade
Phil Volatile
…love is by definition freeand if he choose to gowhen I would have him stayperhaps I'll die a bitbut I'd rather sothan taste his absent minded kissand lie uneasy in a masked embrace
Lenore Kandel
There are no sides in suicide.
Anthony Liccione
She ached: oh, how she ached. Her soul was like one big bruise.
Alison Croggon
When you've been hurt enough as a kid (maybe at any age), it's like you have a trick knee. Most of your life, you can function like an adult, but add in the right portions of sleeplessness and stress and grief, and the hurt, defeated self can bloom into place.
Mary Karr
Everything in this place was livid and lurid and living, and when he loved her and hurt her all at once she lived, too, higher and harder than she had thought she could.
Catherynne M. Valente
But the thing is that, in the end, we each must decide how comfortable we are with how much we hurt other people
Chris Abani
people say things meant to rip you in half but you hold the power to notturn their words into a knifeand cut yourself
Rupi Kaur
I think about the story of Job I heard in Carol Sharp's Sunday school. How he sort of learned to lean into feeling hurt at the end, the way you might lean into a heavy wind that almost winds up supporting you after a while.
Mary Karr
Something else is hurting you - that’s why you need pot or whiskey, or whips and rubber suits, or screaming music turned so fucking loud you can’t think.
Charles Bukowski
later that night i held an atlas in my lap ran my fingers across the whole world and whispered where does it hurt?it answered everywhere everywhere everywhere.
Warsan Shire
You have to accept all sides of yourself – there’s no point fighting them – just learn how to handle them, and return to the positive, balanced being you know you can be, once the winds have blown through.
Jay Woodman
If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.
Thomas Watson
Beware of those who speak negatively about everything and everybody. A negative person will never say a positive thing about you.
Suzy Kassem
Live every moment.. in an effort to bring a positive difference to the world
Alok Jagawat
It's only in Algebra that two negatives make a positive
Charmaine J.Forde
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Art is a house that tries to be haunted.
Emily Dickinson
Never judge the othersfor each one wears a coverfor their version of the original.(talking about individuals in the stream of consciousness that gives rise to each one of us.)
Jay Woodman
Never Judge a Book by its Cover". This quote doesn't apply to books only, but also to people, places and everything else.
Edwin Rolfe and Lester Fuller
And I go home having lost her love. And write this book.
Jack Kerouac
To love a book is, above all, to love its author: we want to meet him again, we want to spend our days with him.
Michel Houellebecq
Michelle felt that if people didn’t like the way they looked in her book then they should have behaved differently.
Michelle Tea
A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
W.H. Auden
I grabbed my book and opened it up. I wanted to smell it. Heck, I wanted to kiss it. Yes, kiss it. That's right, I am a book kisser. Maybe that's kind of perverted or maybe it's just romantic and highly intelligent.
Sherman Alexie
Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.
Bertolt Brecht
The male frog, in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs - it's been documented - discover that if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier, and the small frog appears much larger than it really is.""So?""So that's what art is, for the artist," said Crake. "An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.""Your analogy falls down when it comes to female artists," said Jimmy. "They're not in it to get laid. They'd gain no biological advantage from amplifying themselves, since potential mates would be deterred rather than attracted by this sort of amplification. Men aren't frogs, they don't want women who are ten times bigger than them.""Female artists are biologically confused," said Crake.
Margaret Atwood
So long as we are driven by the need to make up for our needs; by the restless sense that we are not yet fully assured of our place in the world and our hold on its swarming phenomena; so long as there is more to be discovered and made, more to grasp for and make real, we must go on inventing ourselves.
David Malouf
Animals have genes for altruism, and those genes have been selected in the evolution of many creatures because of the advantage they confer for the continuing survival of the species.
Lewis Thomas
All of today's DNA, strung through all the cells of the earth, is simply an extension and elaboration of [the] first molecule.
Lewis Thomas
The uniformity of the earth's life, more astonishing than its diversity, is accountable by the high probability that we derived, originally, from some single cell, fertilized in a bolt of lightning as the earth cooled. It is from the progeny of this parent cell that we take our looks; we still share genes around, and the resemblance of the enzymes of grasses to those of whales is a family resemblance.
Lewis Thomas
Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form: Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same.
Erasmus Darwin
It's Survival of Them Who's Best at Nicking Things, girl!
Catherynne M. Valente
Evolution strikes me as infinitely more spiritually profound than Genesis.
Maggie Nelson
Always be respectful and open-minded when listening to another man's beliefs. What you reject today could be your mantra tomorrow. Man's evolution is all about transformations. An unexpected experience you have one day can change you forever.
Suzy Kassem
All of creation expands and evolves.
Jay Woodman
The Wishing BonesA thousand grandmothers ago Pyrrha and Deucalion repopulated the world with rocks, bones of mother Earth, a generation of my ancestors strained from the mud of a drowned planet.But I’m more interested in my earliest grandmothers, their gills and wetness,before they crawled from that blue expanseand learned to carry the sea within them,in their cells, between their cells, in their eyes.The buoyancy of ocean has never left us.It hides in skin’s complex reservoir where we're selectively permeable and our bodies exchange the smallest life.If we had no need to distinguish ourselves from others we’d be missing the skin that defines lovers and enemies and opens itself to both.
Jalina Mhyana