Quotes by Poets - Page 210

I will blame no enemy that is a good man, nor yet praise a friend that is bad
Theognis
To be honest, as this world goes is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.Hamlet Act II, Scene II Lines 178-179
William Shakespeare
Honesty can be painful, but it's always better than bullshit.
RC deWinter
In each generation, there is this certain wisdom of the ages that gets reburied in the fleeting drivels of modernity; then, like a diamond in the rough, it is yet again unearthed by a very small minority who not only restores it, but also polishes it and presents it as something new, something highly valuable and refreshing as understood by the current.
Criss Jami
Knowing to do the right thing, but playing stupid to oblige to it, is still lying.
Anthony Liccione
Truth is such a rare thing it is delightful to tell it,
Emily Dickinson
I resent being lied to because a lie doesn't only undermine the value of the truth, but it further denies the liar a fair chance for honesty.
Gugu Mona
Be honest first with yourself before with others since that changes the world.
Ehsan Sehgal
In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric. He must believe his ends to be served all things and people can justifiably be shifted about, or that he is the center not only of his own world but of the worlds which others inhabit.
Maya Angelou
Once a man takes honesty as his ideal, he cannot confine himself to showing the pleasant and reasonable side of his nature.
Hermann Hesse
Once a man takes honesty as his ideal, he cannot confine himself to showing to pleasant and reasonable side of his nature.
Hermann Hesse
Craigengelt, you are either an honest fellow in right good earnest, and I scarce know how to believe that; or you are cleverer than I took you for, and I scarce know how to believe that either.
Walter Scott
Life is warped. I'm just in sync.
Margaret Atwood
I’d rather have a cup of coffee and a cigarette than live in all that honesty.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Just be yourself. An original is worth more than a copy.
Suzy Kassem
You see, I have a policy about honesty and ass-kicking, which is, if you ask for it, then I have to let you have it.
Taylor Mali
Honesty's the best policy.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
What a fool honesty is.
William Shakespeare
Even if there are instances in which it can be mistook by onlookers, never fool yourself into using misunderstood genius as an excuse to be a fool.
Criss Jami
Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance.
William Shakespeare
And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.
Jack Kerouac
Just tell yourself a story that'll satisfy you and pretend he told it.
Catherynne M. Valente
To be truly positive in the eyes of some, you have to risk appearing negative in the eyes of others.
Criss Jami
Being nice merely to be liked in return nullifies the point.
Criss Jami
The truth needs so little rehearsal.
Barbara Kingsolver
To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.
William Shakespeare
No legacy is so rich as honesty.
William Shakespeare
We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
Robert Louis Stevenson
In general I strive for greatness and rational achievement, but I admit to you I’ve a terrible fondness for women, a tendency towards drunkenness, and a weakness for the fumes of the poppy—opium and other miserable beauties.
Roman Payne
Nay, could their numbers countervail the stars,Or ever-drizzling drops of April showers,Or wither'd leaves that autumn shaketh down,Yet would the Soldan by his conquering powerSo scatter and consume them in his rage, That not a man should live to rue their fall.
Christopher Marlowe
Greatness is in influence, and not necessarily in affluence. It is not achieved by being a 'paper millionaire', but by being a 'people millionaire'.
Ogwo David Emenike
There was never a great genius without a touch of madness.
Ben Jonson
That men, who might have tower'd in the vanOf all the congregated world, to fanAnd winnow from the coming step of timeAll chaff of custom, wipe away all slimeLeft by men-slugs and human serpentry,Have been content to let occasion die,Whilst they did sleep in love's Elysium.
John Keats
No, I don't admire the genius. But I admire and love the result of the genius's activity in the world, of which the great man is only the poor necessary tool, only, so to speak, the paltry awl to bore with.
Knut Hamsun
We knew she [Sylvia] was unusual, because of the seriousness with which she was treated, the lofty importance of her job as guest managing editor, and because she was kept fast at her desk when the rest of us were allowed to fool around….I remember we discussed how the editors treater her differently from the rest of us, as if she had been pre-recognized as someone they were expecting great things of.
Elizabeth Winder
You can only become great at that thing you're willing to sacrifice for.
Maya Angelou
And here we go creating great men out of artisans who happened to have stumbled on a way to improve electrical apparatus or pedal through Sweden on a bicycle! And we solicit great men to write books promoting the cult of other great men! It's really very funny, and worth the price of admission! It will all end up with every village having his own great man - a lawyer, a novelist, and a polar explorer of immense stature! And the world will become wonderfully flat and simple and easy to master . . .
Knut Hamsun
Greatness comes with patience.
Suzy Kassem
To vastly improve your country and truly make it great again, start by choosing a better leader. Do not let the media or the establishment make you pick from the people they choose, but instead choose from those they do not pick.
Suzy Kassem
For those who are with greatness bornShould live not for themselves alone.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
Fame is a jealous mistressAnd will brook no rival.
Thiruvalluvar
Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.
William Shakespeare
What a face this girl possessed!—could I not gaze at it every day I would need to recreate it through painting, sculpture, or fatherhood until a second such face is born. Her face, at once innocent and feral, soft and wild! Her mouth voluptuous. Eyes deep as oceans, her eyes as wide as planets. I likened her to the slender Psyché and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: the dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her tiny bare feet, the coal-stained balcony bricks upon which she sat, and that dusty wrought-ironwork that framed her perch. All this and the pungent air!—almost foul, with so many odors. Ô, that and the spicy night! …Pungency, spice, filth and night, dust and light; all things dark did blossom in sight; flower and bloom, the night has its pearl too—the moon! And once a month it will make the face of this tender girl bloom.
Roman Payne
When I am alone and my skull is ripsaw I want to jump into the womb of any bonfire, I want to leap into the ceiling fan head first, but I need that fan this coming summer.
Derrick Brown
We celebrate beauty in life and all its possibility so we open it up for others and at the same time for ourselves.
Jay Woodman
Some boys... Are perfect shits. & other boys are very, very beautiful.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I know you all, and will awhile uphold the unyoked humour of your idleness . . .
William Shakespeare
as the shadows assumeshapesI fight the slowretreatnowmy once-promisedwindlingdwindlingnowlighting new cigarettespouring moredrinksit has been a beautifulfightstillis.
Charles Bukowski
Certainly not the way someone will have told you the same thing yesterday, made you feel alternately - simultaneously - angry and guilty, guilty because complicit because flattered, therefore unfairly angry.
Jennifer Clarvoe
The beautiful must be incongruous.
Julien Torma
For till the thunder and trumpet be,Soul may divide from body, but not weOne from another
Algernon Charles Swinburne
I'm a beautiful mess of contradiction,A chaotic display of imperfection.
Sai Marie Johnson
No man sings as beautifully as when his song is accompanied by a woman’s voice.
Roman Payne
The most mesmerizing of artists is always like one who was merely drawing in the sand and people came to watch.
Criss Jami
If someone wants to suck your toes, those toes should be worth sucking.
Margaret Atwood
What good is there in being blind, you ask? Well, maybe it's to see the beauty on the inside without being vainly distracted, or superficially blinded, by the ugly on the outside.
Criss Jami
My love, my love, is a flame in the dark covered in glass. So glowingly beautiful to others on the outside, while slowly suffocating inside.
Anthony Liccione
The beautiful have so much easier a time of it than the ugly, don't you think? They get smiled at the whole time. Strangers offer them things. People notice the beautiful; the beautiful are constantly acknowledged.
Jackie Kay
REFLECTIONS OF A MIRRORBeautiful is he who recognizes what is truly beautiful,Even if the surface is ugly.Truthful is he who says what is true,Even if the truth is ugly.Ugly is he who measures beauty by its exterior,Without first weighing the interior.And ugly is the man who judges harshly what he sees looking out,Without first judging what he sees in the mirror.
Suzy Kassem
I am sixteen when my mother steps out of her skin one frozen January afternoon- pure self, atoms twinkling like microscopic diamond chips around her, perhaps the chiming of a clock, or a few bright flute notes in the distance- and disappears. No one sees her leave, but she is gone.
Laura Kasischke