Quotes by Poets - Page 452

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.And when you have reached the mountaintop,then you shall begin to climb.And when the earth shal claim your limbs,then shall you truly dance.
Kahlil Gibran
You smile upon your friend to-day,To-day his ills are over;You hearken to the lover's say,And happy is the lover.'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never:I shall have lived a little whileBefore I die for ever.
A.E. Housman
Now every mortal has painand sweat is constant,but if there is anything dearer than being alive,it's dark to me.We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth--we call it life. We know no other.The underworld's a blankand all the rest just fantasy.
Anne Carson
La vida es mi tortura y la muerte será mi descanso.
William Shakespeare
It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom, as the broad base, then the Indians with their silly tomahawks and teepees and wigwams and treaties, the Negroes with their mops and recipes and cotton sacks and spirituals sticking out of their mouths. The Dutch children should all stumble in their wooden shoes and break their necks. The French should choke to death on the Louisiana Purchase (1803) while silkworms ate all the Chinese with their stupid pigtails. As a species, we were an abomination. All of us.
Maya Angelou
Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.
Philip Larkin
ROSENCRANTZ My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go with us to the king.HAMLET The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body. The king is a thing -GUILDENSTERN A thing my lord?HAMLET Of nothing. Bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after!
William Shakespeare
My flesh winced, in cowardice, from such a death.
Sylvia Plath
Facing death calmly is praiseworthy only if one faces it alone. Death together is no longer death, even for unbelievers. The source of sorrows lies not in leaving life, but in leaving that which gives it meaning. When love is our whole life, what difference is there between living together and dying together ?
Raymond Radiguet
Because I could not stop for Death,He kindly stopped for me;The carriage held but just ourselvesAnd Immortality.We slowly drove, he knew no haste,And I had put awayMy labour, and my leisure too,For his civility.We passed the school where children played,Their lessons scarcely done;We passed the fields of gazing grain,We passed the setting sun.We paused before a house that seemedA swelling of the ground;The roof was scarcely visible,The cornice but a mound.Since then 'tis centuries; but eachFeels shorter than the dayI first surmised the horses' headsWere toward eternity.
Emily Dickinson
Death is a part of Life, they are dancing together the dance of infinity in front of the gates of Time. We can live our dreams as we are dreaming our future. Time is the Endless Consciousness
Grigoris Deoudis
Fear leads to death as the window to the courtyard. Jump!
Grigoris Deoudis
When it comes, you’ll be dreamingthat you don’t need to breathe;that breathless silence isthe music of the darkand it’s part of the rhythmto vanish like a spark.
Wisława Szymborska
Romeo: Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.Mercutio: No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve. Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.
William Shakespeare
Death is not a checkmate…it is more like a carnival trick. You cannot win, no matter how you move your Queen.
Catherynne M. Valente
Science ask facts and religion ask faith, humans are confused between life and death.
Santosh Kalwar
Love is bitter, death is sweet.
Jack Kerouac
The idea that all souls are mortal is the only notion surely terminating love and all its forms.
Criss Jami
Dear as remembered kisses after death,And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feign'dOn lips that are for others; deep as love,Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;O Death in Life, the days that are no more!
Alfred Tennyson
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Kahlil Gibran
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,We people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,Clean favored, imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,And he was always human when he talked;But still he fluttered pulses when he said,'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich--yes, richer than a king--And admirably schooled in every grace:In fine, we thought that he was everythingTo make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,Went home and put a bullet through his head.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people
Heinrich Heine
La mayoría de la muerte de la gente es una farsa, no queda en ellos nada que pueda morir
Charles Bukowski
The thin line between life and death is still under construction.
Santosh Kalwar
The painful truth about life is not death but death while you are alive.
Santosh Kalwar
And when suddenlythe god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry,uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?
Rainer Maria Rilke
The candle glimmers but an hour. The nightLooms in its ancient hunger. Would you knowThe tragedy of human love and need?Gaze on the stars, then on a brother's face!
George Sterling
I am dying now, but I still have many things to say.
Roberto Bolaño
The foolish rush to end their lives.Only the steadfast soul survives.
Christine de Pizan
Prate not to me of suicide, Faint heart in battle, not for pride I say Endure, but that such end denied Makes welcomer yet the death that's to be died.
Stevie Smith
Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.
Meghan O'Rourke
Because I could not stop for death he kindly stopped for me, or paused at least to strike a glancing blow with his sky-blue mouth as he passed.
Barbara Kingsolver
Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Wilfred Owen
O my love, my wife!Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breathHath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
William Shakespeare
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and melt into the sun?
Kahlil Gibran
Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.
Anne Sexton
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;Thus unlamented let me die;Steal from the world, and not a stoneTell where I lie.
Alexander Pope
The grave's a fine and private place,But none, I think, do there embrace.
Andrew Marvell
But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound My echoing song; then worms shall try That long-preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust; The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.
Andrew Marvell
Around, around the sun we go:The moon goes round the earth.We do not die of death:We die of vertigo.
Archibald MacLeish
But, who is Death? A figure that harrows and wastes wherever and however it pleases. This is also a possible description of the Countess Bathory. Never did anyone wish so hard not to grow old; I mean, to die. That is why, perhaps, she acted and played the role of Death. Because, how can Death possibly die?
Alejandra Pizarnik
The reason they invented coffins, to lock the dead in, preserve them, they put makeup on them; they didn't want them spreading or changing into anything else. The stone with the name and date was on them to weight them down.
Margaret Atwood
Just being alive should make you late for everything. In case you've never noticed, the dead are always on time.
Arlene Ang
And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.
Mark Doty
The Chorus Line:A Rope-Jumping Rhymewe are the maidsthe ones you killedthe ones you failedwe danced in airour bare feet twitchedit was not fairwith every goddess, queen, and bitchfrom there to hereyou scratched your itchwe did much lessthan what you didyou judged us badyou had the spearyou had the wordat your commandwe scrubbed the bloodof our deadparamours from floors, from chairsfrom stairs, from doors,we knelt in waterwhile you staredat our bare feetit was not fairyou licked our fearit gave you pleasureyou raised your handyou watched us fallwe danced on airthe ones you failedthe ones you killed
Margaret Atwood
I have never lived a life so much larger than death. (93)
Stephen Levine
It's time, Old Captain, lift anchor, sink!The land rots; we shall sail into the night;if now the sky and sea are black as inkour hearts, as you must know, are filled with light.Only when we drink poison are we well —we want, this fire so burns our brain tissue,to drown in the abyss — heaven or hell,who cares? Through the unknown, we'll find the new. ("Le Voyage")
Charles Baudelaire
And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.
Edgar Allan Poe
Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives! Fight on; death is better than defeat! Fight on brave knights! for bright eyes behold your deeds!
Walter Scott
poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you
Walt Whitman
When the star dies, Its eye closes; tired of watching, It flies back to its first bright dream.
Dejan Stojanovic
We are all dying one by one. We all smell of mortality, and we can't wash it off.
Siri Hustvedt
If you can overcome love, you can overcome fear. If you can overcome fear, you can overcome death.
Santosh Kalwar
It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, but it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: music, laughter, the physics of falling leaves, automobiles, holding hands, the scent of rain, the concept of subway trains... if only one could leave this life slowly!
Roman Payne
How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88)
Stephen Levine
If I could find one wordthat would shudder the airlike that frightened sob,that wordless prayerof my newly-born,who drew one breath,and with unopened eyessank back into death;If I could break the world's cold heartwith that cry,then this grief would liftand I could die.
Kenneth L. Patton
I am not ready to die,But I am learning to trust deathAs I have trusted life.I am movingToward a new freedom
May Sarton
shot in the eyeshot in the brainshot in the assshot like a flower in the danceamazing how death wins hands downamazing how much credence is given to idiot forms oflifeamazing how laughter has been drowned outamazing how viciousness is such a constantI must soon declare my own war on their warI must hold to my last piece of groundI must protect the small space I have made that hasallowed me lifemy life not their deathmy death not their deaththis place, this time, nowI vow to the sunthat I will laugh the good laugh once againin the perfect place of meforever.their death not my life.
Charles Bukowski
Ich werde stehen und warten.Ich werde müde werden.Ich werde nicht einschlafen.Ich werde sterben.
Hermann Hesse
Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.
Barbara Kingsolver