Quotes by Poets - Page 454

This feather stirs; she lives! if it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.
William Shakespeare
I've changed my ways a little, I cannot nowRun with you in the evenings along the shore,Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment,You see me there.
Robinson Jeffers
Did she say anything before she died?" he asked."Yes," the surgeon said. "She said, 'Forgive him'""Forgive him?" my father asked."I think she was referring to the drunk driver who killed her."Wow.My grandmother's last act on earth was a call for forgiveness, love and tolerance.She wanted us to forgive Gerald, the dumb-ass Spokane Indian alcoholic who ran her over and killed her.I think My Dad wanted to go find Gerald and beat him to death.I think my mother would have helped him.I think I would have helped him, too.But my grandmother wanted us to forgive her murderer.Even dead, she was a better person than us.
Sherman Alexie
THE WEATHER OF LOVELoveHas a way of wiltingOr blossomingAt the strangest,Most unpredictable hour.This is how love is,An uncontrollable beastIn the form of a flower.The sun does not always shine on it.Nor does the rain always pour on itNor should it always get beaten by a storm.Love does not always emit the sweetest scents,And sometimes it can sting with its thorns.Water it.Give it plenty of sunlight.Nurture it,And the flower of love willOutlive you.Neglect it or keep dissecting it,And its petals will quickly curl up and die.This is how love is,Perfection is a delusional vision.So love the person who loves youUnconditionally,And abandon the oneWho only loves youUnder favorableConditions.
Suzy Kassem
Tell me not in mournful numbers,Life is but an empty dream!For the soul is dead that slumbers,And things are not what they seem.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left – that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting the small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief that was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood. (51)
Ron Rash
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
Jean Cocteau
Tonight I saw myself in the dark window asthe image of my father, whose lifewas spent like this,thinking of death, to the exclusionof other sensual matters,so in the end that lifewas easy to give up, sinceit contained nothing: evenmy mother's voice couldn't make himchange or turn backas he believedthat once you can't love another human beingyou have no place in the world.
Louise Glück
whats here a cup closed in my true loves hand poisin i see hath been his timeless end. oh churl drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after. i will kiss thy lips some poisin doth hang on them, to help me die with a restorative. thy lips are warm.yea noise then ill be brief oh happy dagger this is thy sheath. there rust and let me die.
William Shakespeare
I find relief from the questions only when I concede that I am not obliged to know everything. I remind myself it is sufficient to know what I know, and that what I know, may not always be true.
Maya Angelou
Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar.
Margaret Atwood
My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to seeIf Immortality unveil A third event to me,So huge, so hopeless to conceive, As these that twice befell.Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell.
Emily Dickinson
true apothecary thy drugs art quick
William Shakespeare
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!
Edgar Allan Poe
A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.
Barbara Kingsolver
Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.
Mary Karr
Death has this much to be said for it:You don't have to get out of bed for it.Wherever you happen to beThey bring it to you—free.
Kingsley Amis
I am forever walking upon these shores,Betwixt the sand and the foam,The high tide will erase my food prints,And the wind will blow away the foam,But the sea and the shore will remain forever.
Kahlil Gibran
I wonder if it hurts to live,And if they have to try,And whether, could they choose between,They would not rather die.
Emily Dickinson
Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death,Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,To take into the air my quiet breath.
John Keats
The rest, is silence.
William Shakespeare
Clown: Good Madonna, why mournest thou?Olivia: Good Fool, for my brother's death.Clown:I think his soul is in hell, Madonna.Olivia:I know his soul is in heaven, Fool.Clown: The more fool, Madonna, to mourn for your brother's soul being in heaven.
William Shakespeare
the worst thing," he told me,"is bitterness, people end up sobitter.
Charles Bukowski
I'm not ashamed of heroic ambitions. If man and woman can only dance upon this earth for a few countable turns of the sun... let each of us be an Artemis, Odysseus, or Zeus... Aphrodite to the extent of the will of each one.
Roman Payne
Where music thundered let the mind be still,Where the will triumphed let there be no will,What light revealed, now let the dark fulfill.
May Sarton
When the suicide arrived at the sky, the people there asked him: "Why?" He replied: "Because no one admired me.
Stephen Crane
For death is life. It is only living that is lifeless.
Mervyn Peake
Bu dağlarda bin kere ölmeden, bir kere dirilemezsin.
Yaşar Kemal
Let me go: take back thy gift:Why should a man desire in any wayTo vary from the kindly race of men,Or pass beyond the goal of ordinanceWhere all should pause, as is most meet for all?...Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’- Tithonus
Alfred Tennyson
Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death...
John Keats
We are all the fools of time and terror: DaysSteal on us and steal from us; yet we live,Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.
George Gordon Byron
Here lies a gentleman boldWho was so very braveHe went to lengths untold,And on the brink of the graveDeath had on him no hold.By the world he set small store--He frightened it to the core--Yet somehow, by Fate's plan,Though he'd lived a crazy man,When he died he was sane once more.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
My love, do you recall the object which we saw,That fair, sweet, summer morn!At a turn in the path a foul carcassOn a gravel strewn bed,Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,Burning and dripping with poisons,Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant wayIts belly, swollen with gases.
Charles Baudelaire
Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI'll make you little jackets;I'll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There'll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the penniesTo save in his bank;Anne shall have the keysTo make a pretty noise with.Life must go on,Though good men die;Anne, eat your breakfast;Dan, take your medicine;Life must go on;I forget just why.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The light at the end of the tunnel is just the light of an oncoming train.
Robert Lowell
From too much love of livingFrom hope and fear set free,We thank with brief thanksgivingWhatever gods may beThat no life lives for ever;That dead men rise up never;That even the weariest riverWinds somewhere safe to sea.Then star nor sun shall waken,Nor any change of light:Nor sound of waters shaken,Nor any sound or sight:Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,Nor days nor things diurnal;Only the sleep eternalIn an eternal night.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
When along the pavement,Palpitating flames of life,People flicker around me,I forget my bereavement,The gap in the great constellation,The place where a star used to be
D.H. Lawrence
It was not my intention to collapse; no, I would die standing.
Knut Hamsun
Where is Polonius? HAMLET t In heaven. Send hither to see. If your messenger find him not there, seek him i' th' other place yourself. But if indeed you find him not within this month, you shall nose him as you go up the stairs into the lobby.
William Shakespeare
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Edgar Allan Poe
Death is not the worst thing; rather, when one who craves death cannot attain even that wish.
Sophocles
Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;Life and these lips have long been separated:Death lies on her like an untimely frostUpon the sweetest flower of all the field.
William Shakespeare
In the middle of life, death comesto take your measurements. The visitis forgotten and life goes on. But the suitis being sewn on the sly.
Tomas Tranströmer
On the Death of his ChildDew Evaporates And all our world is dew...so dear, So fresh, so fleeting
Kobayashi Issa
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, / That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
William Shakespeare
Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shoreWhere neither piping bird nor peeping dawnDisturbs the eternal sleep,But in the stillness far withdrawnOur dreamless rest for evermore we keep.
Robert Louis Stevenson
O weep for Adonis - He is dead." "Peace. He is not dead he doth not sleep - he hath wakened from the dream of life
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Rest in Peace?’ Why that phrase? That’s the most ridiculous phrase I’ve ever heard! You die, and they say ‘Rest in Peace!’ …Why would one need to ‘rest’ when they’re dead?! I spent thousands of years of world history resting. While Agamemnon was leading his ships to Troy, I was resting. While Ovid was seducing women at the chariot races, I was resting. While Jeanne d’Arc was hallucinating, I was resting. I wait until airplanes are scuttling across the sky to burst out onto the scene, and I’m only going to be here for a short while, so when I die, I certainly won’t need to rest again! Not while more adventures of the same kind are going on.
Roman Payne
The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
well, death says, as he walks by, I'm going to get you anyhow no matter what you've been: writer, cab-driver, pimp, butcher, sky-diver, I'm going to get you
Charles Bukowski
Nothing is ever truly gone... Not for me, nor for any human being. We can only go forward, unless we are guests in some enchantment that is not is ours. We are condemned to an endless present, and we can never go back-the source of all our joy, and all our sorrow." -Hem at Zelika's grave
Alison Croggon
Death is another bar which lies several steps below the normal world. I'm at its threshold, but not yet in it. Its doorway is doorless.
Kathy Acker
He could not stand. It was notThat he could not thrive, he was bornWith everything but the will –That can be deformed, just like a limb.Death was more interesting to him.Life could not get his attention.
Ted Hughes
Here at lastWe shall be free;the Almighty hath not builtHere for his envy, will not drive us hence:Here we may reign secure, and in my choiceTo reign is worth ambition though in Hell:Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.
John Milton
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills,And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me,And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’dTo dwell in presence of immortal youth,Immortal age beside immortal youth,And all I was, in ashes. - Tithonus
Alfred Tennyson
Don't wake me for the end of the world unless it has very good special effects.
Roger Zelazny
No, my dog used to gaze at me,paying me the attention I need,the attention requiredto make a vain person like me understandthat, being a dog, he was wasting time,but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,he’d keep on gazing at mewith a look that reserved for me aloneall his sweet and shaggy life,always near me, never troubling me,and asking nothing.
Pablo Neruda
The many men, so beautiful!And they all dead did lie:And a thousand thousand slimy thingsLived on; and so did I.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.
William Shakespeare
Nothing remains forever, only thing that remain forever is romantically stupid word forever.
Santosh Kalwar