Quotes by Poets - Page 32

There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.
Hermann Hesse
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
T.S Eliot
There is no such thing as pure pleasure some anxiety always goes with it.
Ovid
The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
Oliver Goldsmith
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana
What has always made a hell on earth has been that man has tried to make it his heaven.
Friedrich Hölderlin
Happy the man who early learns the wide chasm that lies between his wishes and his powers.
Johann von Goethe
May God ... let me strive for attainable things.
Pindar
There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.
May Sarton
We cannot all be masters.
William Shakespeare
It isn't important to come out on top what matters is to be the one who comes out alive.
Bertolt Brecht
We set up harsh and unkind rules against ourselves. No one is born without faults. That man is best who has fewest.
Horace
Life is a perilous voyage.
Palladas
The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.
Johann von Goethe
Learn to ... be what you are and learn to resign with a good grace all that you are not.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
I can't write a book commensurate with Shakespeare but I can write a book by me.
Sir Walter Raleigh
I have done what I could do in life and if I could not do better I did not deserve it. In vain I have tried to step beyond what bound me.
Maurice Maeterlinck
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
What is destructive is impatience haste expecting too much too fast.
May Sarton
A pint can't hold a quart-if it holds a pint it is doing all that can be expected of it.
Margaret Deland
Life is not a spectacle or a feast it is a predicament.
George Santayana
Vexed sailors curse the rain for which poor shepherds prayed in vain.
Edmund Waller
Be still sad heart and cease repining Behind the clouds is the sun still shining Thy fate is the common fate of all Into each life some rain must fall Some days must be dark and dreary.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Joseph Addison
In the world of mules there are no rules.
Ogden Nash
Bland as a Jesuit sober as a hymn.
William Ernest Henley
Epitaph to a waiter: By and by God caught his eye.
David McCord
Parsely is gharsley.
Ogden Nash
What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?
Bertolt Brecht
I don't know much about being a millionaire but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
Dorothy Parker
The Right Honourable gentleman is indebted to his memory for his jests and to his imagination for his facts.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Brevity is the soul of lingerie.
Dorothy Parker
You must lose a fly to catch a trout.
George Herbert
There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer.
Gertrude Stein
One bliss for which there is no match is when you itch to up and scratch.
Ogden Nash
Nothing endures but personal qualities.
Walt Whitman
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
Juvenal
Many individuals have like uncut diamonds shining qualities beneath a rough exterior.
Juvenal
Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no fibs.
Oliver Goldsmith
He that would pun would pick a pocket.
Alexander Pope
Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least able to utter them.
Edgar Allan Poe
I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man.
Charles Lamb
The public! the public! How many fools does it take to make up a public?
Sebastien Chamfort
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time - To let the punishment fit the crime.
W.S. Gilbert
Fear not but trust in Providence Wherever thou may'st be.
Thomas Haynes Bayly
He that doth the ravens feed. Yea providently caters for the sparrow. Be comfort to my age!
William Shakespeare
There is a divinity that shapes our ends Rough-hew them how we will.
William Shakespeare
And pleas'd th' Almighty's orders to perform. Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.
Joseph Addison
Dine on little and sup on less.
Miguel de Cervantes
If you strike a thorn or rose Keep a-goin! If it hails or if it snows Keep a-goin! 'Tain't no use to sit and whine 'Cause the fish ain't on your line Bait your hook an' keep on tryin'. Keep a-goin!
Frank L. Stanton
Modest doubt is call'd The beacon of the wise.
William Shakespeare
That which comes into the world to disturb nothing deserves neither respect nor patience.
René Char
Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear.
Bertolt Brecht
Flight is the only true sensation that men have achieved in modern history.
James Dickey
Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old seek what they sought.
Matsuo Basho
Progress might have been all right once but it's gone on too long.
Ogden Nash
And from the discontent of man The world's best progress springs.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
A thousand things advance nine hundred and ninety-nine retreat that is progress.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Progress far from consisting in change depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are content to repeat it.
George Santayana
By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
Robert Frost