Quotes by Poets - Page 446

How happy is the little stoneThat rambles in the road alone,And doesn't care about careers,And exigencies never fears;Whose coat of elemental brownA passing universe put on;And independent as the sun,Associates or glows alone,Fulfilling absolute decreeIn casual simplicity.
Emily Dickinson
I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.
Anne Sexton
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
William Blake
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society, where none intrudes,By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:I love not Man the less, but Nature more,From these our interviews, in which I stealFrom all I may be, or have been before,To mingle with the Universe, and feelWhat I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
George Gordon Byron
Peace is always beautiful.
Walt Whitman
I discover myself on the verge of a usual mistake.
Walt Whitman
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow worldLike a Colossus; and we petty menWalk under his huge legs, and peep aboutTo find ourselves dishonourable graves.
William Shakespeare
I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.
Edgar Allan Poe
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
Edgar Allan Poe
The bridge will only take you halfway there, to those mysterious lands you long to see. Through gypsy camps and swirling Arab fair, and moonlit woods where unicorns run free. So come and walk awhile with me and share the twisting trails and wondrous worlds I've known. But this bridge will only take you halfway there. The last few steps you have to take alone.
Shel Silverstein
You fit into melike a hook into an eyea fish hookan open eye
Margaret Atwood
I?I walk alone;The midnight streetSpins itself from under my feet;My eyes shutThese dreaming houses all snuff out;Through a whim of mineOver gables the moon's celestial onionHangs high.IMake houses shrinkAnd trees diminishBy going far; my look's leashDangles the puppet-peopleWho, unaware how they dwindle,Laugh, kiss, get drunk,Nor guess that if I choose to blinkThey die.IWhen in good humour,Give grass its greenBlazon sky blue, and endow the sunWith gold;Yet, in my wintriest moods, I holdAbsolute powerTo boycott color and forbid any flowerTo be.IKnow you appearVivid at my side,Denying you sprang out of my head,Claiming you feelLove fiery enough to prove flesh real,Though it's quite clearAll your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,From me."Soliloquy of the Solipsist", 1956
Sylvia Plath
It was at that agethat poetry came in search of me.
Pablo Neruda
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Rainer Maria Rilke
may came home with a smooth round stoneas small as a world and as large as alone.
E.E. Cummings
life's not a paragraphAnd death i think is no parenthesis
E.E. Cummings
The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell youDon't go back to sleep!You must ask for what you really want.Don't go back to sleep!People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch,The door is round and openDon't go back to sleep!
Jalaluddin Rumi
Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.But you are eternity and you are the mirror.
Kahlil Gibran
I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.
Mary Oliver
The poetry of the earth is never dead.
John Keats
I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with.Tell me why you loved them,then tell me why they loved you.Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through.Tell me what the word home means to youand tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s namejust by the way you describe your bedroomwhen you were eight.See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate,and if that day still trembles beneath your bones.Do you prefer to play in puddles of rainor bounce in the bellies of snow?And if you were to build a snowman,would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman armsor would leave your snowman armlessfor the sake of being harmless to the tree?And if you would,would you notice how that tree weeps for youbecause your snowman has no arms to hug youevery time you kiss him on the cheek?Do you kiss your friends on the cheek?Do you sleep beside them when they’re sadeven if it makes your lover mad?Do you think that anger is a sincere emotionor just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain?See, I wanna know what you think of your first name,and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joywhen she spoke it for the very first time.I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind.Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel.Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years oldbeating up little boys at school.If you were walking by a chemical plantwhere smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black cloudswould you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loudor would you whisper“That cloud looks like a fish,and that cloud looks like a fairy!”Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin?Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea?And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me —how would you explain the miracle of my life to me?See, I wanna know if you believe in any godor if you believe in many godsor better yetwhat gods believe in you.And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself,have the prayers you asked come true?And if they didn’t, did you feel denied?And if you felt denied,denied by who?I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirroron a day you’re feeling good.I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirroron a day you’re feeling bad.I wanna know the first person who taught you your beautycould ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass.If you ever reach enlightenmentwill you remember how to laugh?Have you ever been a song?Would you think less of meif I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key?And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetryI just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around mewho have learned the wisdom of silence.Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence?And if you do —I want you to tell me of a meadowwhere my skateboard will soar.See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living.I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving,and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes.I wanna know if you bleed sometimesfrom other people’s wounds,and if you dream sometimesthat this life is just a balloon —that if you wanted to, you could pop,but you never would‘cause you’d never want it to stop.If a tree fell in the forestand you were the only one there to hear —if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound,would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist,or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness?And lastly, let me ask you this:If you and I went for a walkand the entire walk, we didn’t talk —do you think eventually, we’d… kiss?No, wait.That’s asking too much —after all,this is only our first date.
Andrea Gibson
you can take this mouththis wound you wantbut you can't kissand make itbetter.
Daphne Gottlieb
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
Edgar Allan Poe
If I can see pain in your eyes then share with me your tears. If I can see joy in your eyes then share with me your smile.
Santosh Kalwar
I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.
Sylvia Plath
There are things known and there are things unknownand in between are the doors.
Jim Morrison
We the mortals touch the metals,the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,knowing they will go on, inert or burning,and I was discovering, naming all the these things:it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.
Pablo Neruda
Though much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.
Robert Frost
Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”But I say unto you, they are inseparable.Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Kahlil Gibran
You give but little when you give of your possessions.It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
Kahlil Gibran
I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They ’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!
Emily Dickinson
Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
W.B. Yeats
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
Dylan Thomas
I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.
Arthur Rimbaud
My candle burns at both ends;It will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that's best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes...
George Gordon Byron
The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in meOlder and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.
Robinson Jeffers
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
William Ernest Henley
I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains.I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,Her beauty and her terror –The wide brown land for me!
Dorothea Mackellar
Live not for Battles Won.Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.
Gwendolyn Brooks
April is the cruelest month, breedinglilacs out of the dead land, mixingmemory and desire, stirringdull roots with spring rain.
T.S Eliot
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T.S Eliot
The rain to the wind said,You push and I'll pelt.'They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged--though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.
Robert Frost
Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.And without feet I can make my way to you,without a mouth I can swear your name.Break off my arms, I'll take hold of youwith my heart as with a hand.Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.And if you consume my brain with fire,I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.
Rainer Maria Rilke
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?
Emily Dickinson
to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go
Mary Oliver
Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.
W.H. Auden
There is freedom waiting for you,On the breezes of the sky,And you ask "What if I fall?"Oh but my darling,What if you fly?
Erin Hanson
Music is the universal language of mankind.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Summer night--even the starsare whispering to each other.
Kobayashi Issa
I am awaitingperpetually and forevera renaissance of wonder
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
Novalis
My turn shall also come:I sense the spreading of a wing.
Osip Mandelstam
Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.
W.S. Merwin
Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.
Jack Kerouac
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
Robert Frost