Quotes by Poets - Page 391

I write about adversity, I praise adversity, not to be pessimistic, but rather to strengthen myself. The more familiar that you are with it, the less likely you are to have a breakdown when it occurs. You become more reflective of its purpose, you understand God's reason for it, and are then able to make the best of everything that you are handed. The darkness is only frightening after constant sunshine.
Criss Jami
What may intimidate a man is a woman who thinks with her mind before she feels with her heart. Nevertheless what determines the strength in the man is his ability to accept one when he sees one.
Criss Jami
Instead of the final judgement, what worries me is the final dream.
João Cabral de Melo Neto
The forest has shrunkAnd fear has expanded,The forests have dwindled,There are less animals now, tless courage and less lightning,ttless beautytand the moon lies bare,ttdeflowered by force andtttthen abandoned.
Visar Zhiti
Fear is a powerful stimulant.
Margaret Atwood
Mental clarity ain't for the faint of heart.
Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
Why escape your intended purpose by copying and trying to be someone else? You will discover who you were meant to be only after you have shown confidence being yourself.
Suzy Kassem
The most judgmental people are often those who complain most about being judged. The ones not complaining will look as though they're the ones doing the judging.
Criss Jami
Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Another of the hard things about being in a war, grandchildren, is that although there are times of quiet when the fighting has stopped, you know you will soon be fighting again. Those quiet times give you the chance to think about what has happened. Some of it you would rather not think about, as you remember the pain and the sorrow. You also have time to worry about what will happen when you go into battle again.
Joseph Bruchac
We never know how high we areTill we are called to rise;And then, if we are true to plan,Our statures touch the skies.The heroism we reciteWould be a daily thing,Did not ourselves the cubits warpFor fear to be a king.
Emily Dickinson
Those who speak of progression but are afraid of change are self-repressed and therefore unable to reach any further than their eyes can already see.
Criss Jami
What would be frightening about me jumping out of the bush wearing a pig mask is not the sudden surprise, not me, and not the pig mask, but that the ordinary world had split open for a moment to reveal some possibility never previously considered.
Peter Straub
At a time I used to think that in a world without guards people would walk differently from the way we do in our country. Where people are allowed to think and write differently, I thought, they will also walk differently.
Herta Müller
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and see our illusions die.
W.H. Auden
There is nothing that teaches you more than regrouping after failure ad moving on. Yet most people are stricken wth fear. They fear failure so much that they fail.
Charles Bukowski
Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)
Stephen Levine
Relate to the fear, not just from it. (50)
Stephen Levine
There is, after all, no moral difference between the bigot and the tolerator. They are from case to case positive or negative. One man is bigoted because he was given the sword of truth, another because he is angered in thoughtlessness; then, one man is tolerant because he was given the flag of peace, another because he is cowardly and wishes to hide all guilt.
Criss Jami
To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man.
Robert Louis Stevenson
For sometime now I have believed that it is our own force, all our own force that is still too great for us. It is true that we do not know it; but is it not just that which is most our own of which we know the least?
Rainer Maria Rilke
All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.
Herman Melville
You see, the strangeness of my case is that now I no longer fear the invisible, I’m terrified by reality.
Jean Lorrain
Simple shifts in points of view can open doors to expansions of consciousness as easily as rigid dispositions can close hearts and minds to such elevated awareness. It generally depends on whether you allow fear and violence to rule your actions or whether you give wisdom, courage, and compassion the authority to do so.
Aberjhani
Talking about my fears to others feeds it.
Sylvia Plath
I didn't like anything. Maybe I was afraid. That was it - I was afraid. I wanted to sit alone in a room with the shades down. I feasted upon that. I was a crank. I was a lunatic.
Charles Bukowski
Fear kills more dreams than failure ever will.
Suzy Kassem
Pain is always emotional. Fear and depression keep constant company with chronic hurting.
Siri Hustvedt
The number of ways you can live in one lifetime is limitless. So why limit yourself? The sky is NOT the limit. Beyond the universe is.
Suzy Kassem
The hoopoe said: 'Your heart's congealed like ice;When will you free yourself from cowardice?Since you have such a short time to live here,What difference does it make? What should you fear?The world is filth and sin, and homeless menMust enter it and homeless leave again.They die, as worms, in squalid pain; if weMust perish in this quest, that, certainly,Is better than a life of filth and grief.If this great search is vain, if my beliefIs groundless, it is right that I should die.So many errors throng the world - then whyShould we not risk this quest? To suffer blameFor love is better than a life of shame.No one has reached this goal, so why appealTo those whose blindness claims it is unreal?I'd rather die deceived by dreams than giveMy heart to home and trade and never live.We've been and heard so much - what have we learned?Not for one moment has the self been spurned;Fools gather round and hinder our release.When will their stale, insistent whining cease?We have no freedom to achieve our goalUntil from Self and fools we free the soul.To be admitted past the veil you mustBe dead to all the crowd considers just.Once past the veil you understand the WayFrom which the crowd's glib courtiers blindly stray.If you have any will, leave women's stories,And even if this search for hidden gloriesProves blasphemy at last, be sure our questIs not mere talk but an exacting test.The fruit of love's great tree is poverty;Whoever knows this knows humility.When love has pitched his tent in someone's breast,That man despairs of life and knows no rest.Love's pain will murder him and blandly askA surgeon's fee for managing the task -The water that he drinks brings pain, his breadIs turned to blood immediately shed;Though he is weak, faint, feebler than an ant,Love forces him to be her combatant;He cannot take one mouthful unawareThat he is floundering in a sea of care.
Farid ud-Din Attar
Fear is a bird that refuses to fly, and each time she neglects to use her wings, she consents to the slow death of her destiny.
Nadia Janice Brown
Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.
Sophocles
The pain of the narcissist is that, to him, everything is really a threat. What doesn't surrender in reverence is blasphemous to a high opinion of oneself - the burden of self-importance. The narcissist reconstructs his own law of gravity which states that all things and all creatures must adhere to his personal satisfaction, but when they do not, the pain is far more intense than it is for one who is free from the clamors of 'I'.
Criss Jami
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
Jalaluddin Rumi
Screw your courage to the sticking-place
William Shakespeare
I am too sick to lay downthe sidewalks frighten methe whole damned city frightens me,what I will becomewhat I have becomefrightens me.
Charles Bukowski
Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play.
Sherman Alexie
Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.
Erica Jong
Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room. The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted.
Rabindranath Tagore
...What you fear will not go away; it will take you into yourself and bless you and keep you. That's the world, and we all live there.
William Stafford
Child, child, love while you can The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man; Never fear though it break your heart-Out of the wound new joy will start; Only love proudly and gladly and well, Though love be heaven or love be hell.Child, child, love while you may, For life is short as a happy day; Never fear the thing you feel-Only by love is life made real; Love, for the deadly sins are seven, Only through love will you enter heaven.
Sara Teasdale
I often find that people confuse inner peace with some sense of insensibility whenever something goes wrong. In such cases inner peace is a permit for destruction: The unyielding optimist will pretend that the forest is not burning either because he is too lazy or too afraid to go and put the fire out.
Criss Jami
A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness.
Criss Jami
Everyone believes very easily whatever he fears or desires.
Jean de La Fontaine
It has always seemed that a fear of judgment is the mark of guilt and the burden of insecurity.
Criss Jami
Companionship is a foreign concept to some people. They fear it as much as the majority of people fear loneliness.
Criss Jami
We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.
Jim Morrison
We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.
Erica Jong
Fear is stronger than love, remember that. Fear is stronger than love, all that love I gave didn't mean nothing when it came to fear.
Tupac Shakur
Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you can not bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond that pain.
Kahlil Gibran
I lie on the floor, washed by nothing and hanging on. I cry at night. I am afraid of hearing voices, or a voice. I have come to the edge, of the land. I could get pushed over.
Margaret Atwood
My heart always timidly hides itself behind my mind. I set out to bring down stars from the sky, then, for fear of ridicule, I stop and pick little flowers of eloquence.
Edmond Rostand
Do I dare Disturb the universe?
T.S Eliot
There are many who don't wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Sadly, there are many who don't wish to wake for the same fear.
Richelle E. Goodrich
In an extroverted society, the difference between an introvert and an extrovert is that an introvert is often unconsciously deemed guilty until proven innocent.
Criss Jami
There is a strange moment in time, after something horrible happens, when you know it's true, but you haven't told anyone yet.
Barbara Kingsolver
For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.
Audre Lorde
When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.
Audre Lorde
and when we speak we are afraidour words will not be heardnor welcomedbut when we are silentwe are still afraidSo it is better to speakrememberingwe were never meant to survive
Audre Lorde
In time we hate that which we often fear.
William Shakespeare