Quotes by Poets - Page 201

From out of your heart, you speak."-Emma, When Crickets Cry
Charles Martin
I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall.
Michael Ondaatje
What's in a name?  The accumulation of reputations from all who've owned it before you.
Richelle E. Goodrich
There is no greater evil than men's failure to consult and to consider.
Sophocles
But if Crake wanted her to stay longer on any given night, do it again maybe, she'd make some excuse—jet lag, a headache, something plausible. Her inventions were seamless, she was the best poker-faced liar in the world, so there would be a kiss goodbye for stupid Crake, a smile, a wave, a closed door, and the next minute there she would be, with Jimmy.
Margaret Atwood
If we think of the novel and the epic...The difference lies in the fact that the important thing about the epic is a hero--a man who is a pattern for all men. While, as Mencken pointed out, the essence of most novels lies in the breaking down of a man, in the degeneration of character.
Jorge Luis Borges
To test a man, determine how much it takes to make him lie.
C.J. Langenhoven
Whatever makes an impression on the heart seems lovely in the eye.
Saadi
As our fathers said, you can tell a ripe corn by its look.
Chinua Achebe
Ian was a good man—honest, trustworthy, loyal, and of honorable character. His desire to keep his promise to Angelle and to be a respectable servant of Harrowbeth would always take president over any personal feelings, no matter how intense or gratifying they might be. He would never betray Harrowbeth. He would never cheat Derian or Angelle. He would never deceive his queen, even if in so doing he would find a love and happiness they both longed to share. His commitment to what he saw as right meant more.
Richelle E. Goodrich
There is nothing in which people more betray their character than in what they find to laugh at.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Life is a character-building opportunity that we all volunteered for.
Richelle E. Goodrich
Men, I still think, ought to be weighed, not counted. Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their value.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Victory, is like a boxer that hangs his gloves, after the consecutive losses; sometimes walking away is what builds character, than the actual fight. As humble fruit on a tree that falls to the ground and rots, never finding appreciation in the taste of mouths.
Anthony Liccione
There is a perfect rout of characters in every man—and every man is like an actor’s trunk, full of strange creatures, new & old. But an actor and his trunk are two different things
Wallace Stevens
The only fear that builds character, is the fear of God.
Anthony Liccione
No one ever developed their character by arranging their experiences in such a way that only ‘good’ things are allowed to happen to them. Character is not purchased with a dance in the street. It is not cheap, and it’s hard to come by, owing partly to the fact that it is the heir of disappointment, frustration, betrayal and deceit. However, it is not the inheritance that matters so much as what you do with it. In the face of seemingly insurmountable problems what do you do, and why do you do it? The same holds for dramatic characters whose strength, courage, insight and wisdom have to be earned.
Billy Marshall-Stoneking
Well, I myself, while sometimes unkempt by nights of drunkenness and debauchery, am quite convinced a man’s good character is marked by his impeccable attire.
Hal Duncan
...I was shocked and astonished when a daring little girl -- a cousin I think -- having waited under a group of trees in the avenue, where she knew [my grandfather] would pass near four o'clock on the way to his dinner, said to him, 'If I were you and you were a little girl, I would give you a doll.
W.B. Yeats
A liar deceives himself more than anyone, for he believes he can remain a person of good character when he cannot.
Richelle E. Goodrich
One of the Christian's biggest fears is appearing 'too Christian'. God forbid, because that's often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being 'one of them'.
Criss Jami
Idiosyncrasy and vicissitude had combined to stamp Sergeant Troy as an exceptional being.
Thomas Hardy
It is neither trials nor relationships nor successes nor failures that define a man, but the choices he makes while handling them.
Richelle E. Goodrich
It's not a person's depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent.
Anne Michaels
You get the face you build your whole life, with work and loving and grieving and laughing and frowning.
Catherynne M. Valente
At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Character is a question of time. It lasts for a certain length of time, just like a glove. There are good ones that last a long time. But they don't last forever.
Bertolt Brecht
What many people do not understand is: It's not about who you think you know, but about who actually knows you. So better start giving today, be it giving everything at your job, or giving out lunch to that man. Start giving, and the world will know your true character!
Akilnathan Logeswaran
Although it's good to have talent, character is so much important because bad character is an enemy for great talent.
Gugu Mona
If she had not been imprudence incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard by accident a day or two later.
Thomas Hardy
...The happy Warrior... is he... who, doomed to go in company with pain, and fear, and bloodshed, miserable train turns his necessity to glorious gain; in face of these doth exercise a power which is our human nature's highest dower: controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves of their bad influence, and their good receives: by objects, which might force the soul to abate her feeling, rendered more compassionate; is placable— because occasions rise so often that demand such sacrifice; more skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, as tempted more; more able to endure, as more exposed to suffering and distress; thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
William Wordsworth
One's ugly face and features may not be a problem. Conversely, one's such character displays, well a problem since no one tolerates it.
Ehsan Sehgal
One's character is key to its fate and future of life that how one executes and prosecutes it.
Ehsan Sehgal
Never allow anyone to take you out of character, some people know which buttons to press. (Zip it instead)
Charmaine J.Forde
We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man, but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek.
Thomas Hardy
The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.
William Shakespeare
If something bad smells in the basement, it will eventually make its way to the attic.
Anthony Liccione
Affliction is a good man's shining time.
Edward Young
The most difficult challenge an honest man will ever face is having to choose between duty and love.One creates a man of honorable character―a life worth dying for.The other creates a vulnerable soul that madly yearns for either death or immortality.
Richelle E. Goodrich
It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.
Hermann Hesse
Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Good wombs have borne bad sons."-- (Miranda, I:2)
William Shakespeare
Let us embrace, and from this very moment vow an eternal misery together.
Thomas Otway
Parade my trouble in front of you guys? Make you realize that my heart is broken . . . that as long as I live I'll have chains dragging me down to the oceans of sad tears that my feet are wet in already.
Jack Kerouac
How can you smile as though your whole life hasn't capsized
Michael Ondaatje
A Very Short Song Once, when I was young and true, Someone left me sad- Broke my brittle heart in two; And that is very bad. Love is for unlucky folk, Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.
Dorothy Parker
Not every love comes to a successful conclusion.
Santosh Kalwar
Ah, merciless Love, is there any length to which you cannot force the human heart to go?
Virgil
Weight him, weight, weight him with the sleepiness of themoon.It was only a glass because he looked in it. It was nothing hecould be told.It was a language he spoke, because he must, yet did not know.It was a page he had found in the handbook of heartbreak.
Wallace Stevens
How quickly pettiness returns, and that most ignoble form of real estate, the possessive occupation and tyranny over two square inches of human flesh, the wife's cunt.
Leonard Cohen
I can't get his bonesto go down the fucking drain.I try to stuff the tiny holes,too tiny for this pain.I can't get his bonesto break any way for my gain.Break them back a little too far,never too far for the sake of sane.
Casey Renee Kiser
I wrote too many poems in a language I did not yet know how to speak.
Andrea Gibson
When true love broke my heart in half,I took the whiskey from the shelf,And told my neighbors when to laugh.I keep a dog, and bark myself.
Theodore Roethke
The word bollocks seems strong, punk rock, and imposing, but in reality, bollocks is always too tame to make much of an impact.
Jennifer Harrison
Frantic and serene, vigilant and calm, wrung-out and fortified, explosive and sedate—love commands a vast army of moods. Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as gladiators.
Diane Ackerman
You try getting any sympathy when you tell your best friends how much the self-avowed sadist broke your heart, how much pain she put you through. — Ivan E. Coyote to --------, 2004 (age 35)
David Eso
The audacity is in the living, not in the choosing. You are fearless enough to keep breathing; in the face of loss and pain and humility and gratitude and gifts and brilliance and confusion. This is the amazing thing. Right or wrong can never be anything but small things in the face of your gigantic, intrepid spirit
Jeanette LeBlanc
You want to know how I got these scars? I ripped every last piece of you out of my smile.
Rudy Francisco
After what she's been through, there really should be crime scene tape around her heart.
John Mark Green
Be careful—my heart is broken—and you could fall in
John J. Geddes