Quotes by Poets - Page 3

Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.
Charles Baudelaire
Neruda had his first dream, First meeting with the Moon and the Sun In sunny La Mancha, hiding in his heart,Where he learned how to sing like a nightingale.
Dejan Stojanovic
If I spelled out the Principles of FaithI would be barking on the moon.
Leonard Cohen
Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac treeFrom which a small wood-owl calls.
Johannes Bobrowski
DeLois lived up the block on 142nd Street and never had her hair done, and all the neighbourhood women sucked their teeth as she walked by. Her crispy hair twinkled in the summer sun as her big proud stomach moved her on down the block while I watched, not caring whether or not she was a poem.
Audre Lorde
Woman! Come out! I have—" She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. "I have come to rescue you," she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils.
Catherynne M. Valente
Gain fame, and the paparazzi or media waits and watches for them to slip, just to shame their name.
Anthony Liccione
I think it’s vital. It’s odd to me because many people say we live in these awful times and we need culture and art especially in times like these, in these dire times. Well, first of all, I don’t think these times are more dire than other times. People who say that just need to go back and read Herodotus, read any book of history, read a biography of Attila the Hun. If people are going to wring their hands over these troubled times, I would think that humor should be indispensable. I find it strange that –at least in my take on it—the people who are the most alarmed about the dire times we live in are the ones who seem to be humorless, in their taste for poetry anyway. Humor is just an ingredient.
Billy Collins
The Most Dangerous (Sab Ton Khatarnak - Paash)The most dangerous occurrence is not a robbery of hard work,The most horrifying act is not a torture by the police,A merger of treachery and greed is not the most dangerous.To be trapped while asleep is surely miserable,To be buried under the silence is surely miserable,But it is still not the most dangerous.To remain silent in the noise of corruption is surely miserable,Reading covertly under the light of a firefly is surely miserable,But it is still not the most dangerous.The most dangerous deed is to be filled with a dead silence,Not feeling any agony against the unjust and bearing it all.Getting trapped in the routine of running from home to work and from work to home,The most dangerous accident is a death of our dreams.The most dangerous thing is that watch which runs on your wrist, but stands still for your eyes**A Translation of Paash's poem Sab ton Khatarnak by Jasz Gill
Paash
When you discipline a child you prepare them for a responsible and accountable adulthood.
Gugu Mona
He tried not to laugh, but he wasn't good at controlling all the laughter that lived inside of him.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Isolation allows me to think more clearly, and I think out loud sometimes.After all, I wouldn't want to accuse anyone of plagiarism.
Charmaine J.Forde
And I realize the unbearable anguish of insanity: how uninformed people can be thinking insane people are "happy," O God, in fact it was Irwin Garden once warned me not to think the madhouses are full of "happy nuts." (p. 200)
Jack Kerouac
People are like water: Many rush pass you, as some will over-flood. Some will drown you, or force you to go their current ways. Some will be cold or hot-tempered, but try to say with the warm ones. Some will come as a raging wave and cause a ripple, or a calm sea, supporting you, quenching your thirst, and flow by your side to where kisses will always stay wet.
Anthony Liccione
The half of her that is underwater would like to beunder a desk, the head of her that is underwaterwould like to be fully immersed.
Patricia Lockwood
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between them, there are doors.
William Blake
Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak."Yes—and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape—then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect.""Oh? And what may that be?""It is not a supernatural creature.""But it is all those other things?""Yes.""Then I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not—so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will.""Ah, but it makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.
Roger Zelazny
If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.
Michelangelo Buonarroti
It did not last: the Devil howling 'Ho, Let Einstein be,' restored the status quo.
John Collings Squire
I am his Highness' dog at Kew;Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
Alexander Pope
The pessimist reason that things just happen, where the optimist believe that things happen for a reason.
Anthony Liccione
Who ever thought to put the word "hero" in heroin?
Anthony Liccione
to ask them to legalize pot is something like asking them to put butter on the handcuffs before they place them on you, 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, or madhouses or mechanical cunts or 162 baseball games in a season. or vietnam or israel or the fear of spiders. your love washing her yellow false teeth in the sink before you screw.
Charles Bukowski
People are strange . . .
Jim Morrison
Only those who will love longer than they expected to can truly love pecan pie, which doesn't explain its status as death rows most requested last dessert, or why chopped pecans, corn syrup, directions from the Karo bottle's cherry-red side are what mercy taste like to some. But there you have it.
Kate Lebo
Let us not, in the pride of our superior knowledge, turn with contempt from the follies of our predecessors. The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. As the man looks back to the days of his childhood and his youth, and recalls to his mind the strange notions and false opinions that swayed his actions at the time, that he may wonder at them; so should society, for its edification, look back to the opinions which governed ages that fled.
Charles Mackay
Wolves in shells are crueler than stray ones.
Gaston Bachelard
Saving and pinching to get married, you're losing the best time of your life.
Muriel Spark
we not only wish to be pleased, but to be pleased in that particularway in which we have been accustomed to be pleased.
William Wordsworth
Words are dead, until action brings them life.
Anthony Liccione
OEDIPUS:O, O, O, they will all come,all come out clearly! Light of the sun, let melook upon you no more after today!I who first saw the light bred of a matchaccursed, and accursed in my livingwith them I lived with, cursed in my killing.
Sophocles
A lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey. A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker.
Suzy Kassem
A girl without braidsis like a city without bridges.
Roman Payne
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.
Roman Payne
Love and honor. They are the two great things, and now they’re dimmed and blighted. Today, love is just sex and sentimentality. Love is really a recognition of truth, a recognition of another person’s integrity and truth in a way that is compatible with — that makes both of you light up when you recognize the quality in the other. That’s what love is. It’s a recognition of singularity… And love is giving and giving and giving … not looking for any return. Until you do that, you can’t love.
Robert Graves
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones who win in the lifelong race.
Robert W. Service
It's the giving that makes one stronger, but sometimes the taking can make one weaker, if even vulnerable or blinding.
Anthony Liccione
[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.
Donald Hall
It is when we finally realize the futility of violence and the invalidity of war will we, the people of this world finally wake up!
Avijeet Das
Writers don't suffer from insanity, they depend upon it!
Avijeet Das
Rather than you smoking a cigarette, the cigarette is really smoking you.
Anthony Liccione
With Cats, some say, one rule is true:Don’t speak till you are spoken to.Myself, I do not hold with that —I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.But always keep in mind that heResents familiarity.I bow, and taking off my hat,Ad-dress him in this form: O Cat!But if he is the Cat next door,Whom I have often met before(He comes to see me in my flat)I greet him with an oopsa Cat!I think I've heard them call him James —But we've not got so far as names.
T.S Eliot
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Captain," said the squire, "the house is quite invisible from the ship. It must be the flag they are aiming at. Would it not be wiser to take it in?""Strike my colours!" cried the captain, "No sir, not I"...
Robert Louis Stevenson
It must be October, the trees are falling away and showing their true colors.
Charmaine J.Forde
He shook hands. With greening faces, with eyes full of sparks, his two friends leaned upon their canes. One had on a crushed bowler (why?)... Both were weary. Both knew that what was approaching was the end. Both had spent the day in their offices and when they interrupted their work with an indiscreet nod, when they turned the conversation toward that end, both broke in "Lord, we have strayed from our business." And ever deeper sunk their eyes, a deathly shadow was descending. The words of his friends had been bought with blood, but they were stolen. Someone, listening, recorded them on a phonograph and thousands of cylinders began to twang. A new enterprise opened, on sale a bronze throat, a screaming cavity; an experienced mechanic installed the throat phonograph. The purchased throat squealed day and night and his friends grew exhausted and one day he said to them both "Lord, I am going." He grinned. And they grinned: they understood everything. Now they stood on the platform, stood with him and saw him off. Someone long and dark with the face of an ox, shoulders crooked as a sorrowful cemetery cross and wrapped up in a frock-coat, swept into the coach. And then the bell rang, and then they waved their bowlers; three wooden arms swung in the air.("Adam")
Andrei Bely
Christmas comes but once a year, starts in August ends in July
Benny Bellamacina
The best way to compete is to get defeat.
Santosh Kalwar
It's always funny that you can try and try again to steal all your critics' ammo, predict their responses, but no matter what, they'll still have a water gun stashed somewhere.
Criss Jami
Well, in the early days of humans, the community was our only protection against predators, and against the starvation. We survived because we trusted one another.
Sherman Alexie
impossible situations can arise on other planets too. We don’t need to think that we’re the only ones who struggle and fight.
Gunnhild Øyehaug
She goes on with her beautiful hair and mouth like before,I go on like before, alone in the field.It’s like my head had been lowered,And if I think this, and raise my headAnd the golden sun dries the need to cry I can’t stop having.How vast the field and interior love... !I look, and I forget, like dryness where there was water and trees losing their leaves.
Alberto Caeiro
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
But though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas have ever regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and repelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though but a moment’s consideration will teach that, however baby man may brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering future, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever, to the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize the stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the continual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense of the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.
Herman Melville
TO ALL MANKINDSpeak kind wordsto mankindand the unkindwill attack you.Speak common senseusing any of your senses,and you will be attacked bythe senseless.Speak truth,and you will be attacked bythe untruthful.Speak about absolutely nothing,and absolutely nothingwill speak back,but then nothing at allwill ever change.
Suzy Kassem
He'd have improved if you'd not givenHim a mere glimmer of the light in heaven;He calls it Reason, and it has only increasedHis power to be beastlier than a beast.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The chaos on our planet, the plundering of resources, and the division of humanity are not the true works of any kind of man. They are the work of those who conquer over man.
Suzy Kassem
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Love is an eternal shining star.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann