Quotes by Poets - Page 455

When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.
Sherman Alexie
What is this thing you call substance abuse? All I wanna do is forget and get loose.Drinking and smoking over and overWhat's so great about a life that's sober?There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun.I'm tired of searching for words in the sky.All I wanna do is drink and die. Nothing is real. It's all a big lie. All I wanna do is drink and die. There's nothing cool about being youngWhen the monsters of night have stolen the sun.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
If it means my death, I don't care, because even death will be a sort of freedom.
Catherine Fisher
Men die. It's practically what they're for.
Catherynne M. Valente
Today will die tomorrow.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Death, a necessary end, will come when it will come
William Shakespeare
We have only a little time to please the living. But all eternity to love the dead.
Sophocles
Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,that soft summer morninground a turning in the path,the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,its legs in the air like a woman in needburning its wedding poisonslike a fountain with its rhythmic sobs,I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound,but I touch my body in vain to find the wound.I am the vampire of my own heart,one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughterwho can no longer smile.Am I dead?I must be dead.
Charles Baudelaire
One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
William Shakespeare
The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.
Catherynne M. Valente
She died--this was the way she died;And when her breath was done,Took up her simple wardrobeAnd started for the sun.Her little figure at the gateThe angels must have spied,Since I could never find herUpon the mortal side.
Emily Dickinson
Though you may hear me holler,And you may see me cry--I'll be dogged, sweet baby,If you gonna see me die.
Langston Hughes
I planned my death carefully, unlike my life, which meandered along from one thing to another, despite my feeble attempts to control it.
Margaret Atwood
Full fathom five thy father lies;Of his bones are coral made;Those are pearls that were his eyes:Nothing of him that doth fade,But doth suffer a sea-changeInto something rich and strange.Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell: Ding-dong Hark! now I hear them,—Ding-dong, bell.
William Shakespeare
Lord help my poor soul.
Edgar Allan Poe
I thought of you and how you love this beauty,And walking up the long beach all aloneI heard the waves breaking in measured thunderAs you and I once heard their monotone.Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond meThe cold and sparkling silver of the sea --We two will pass through death and ages lengthenBefore you hear that sound again with me.
Sara Teasdale
No drowning man can know which dropOf water his last breath did stop
Charles Sedley
What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.
Sylvia Plath
I died as a mineral and became a plant,I died as a plant and rose to animal,I died as an animal and I was Man.Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?
Jalaluddin Rumi
They never fail who die in a great cause.
George Gordon Byron
By daily dying, I have come to be.
Theodore Roethke
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I loveIf you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.You will hardly know who I am or what I meanBut I shall be good health to you nonethelessAnd filter and fibre your blood.
Walt Whitman
That time of year thou mayst in me beholdWhen yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hangUpon those boughs which shake against the cold,Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.In me thou seest the twilight of such dayAs after sunset fadeth in the west,Which by and by black night doth take away,Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.In me thou see'st the glowing of such fireThat on the ashes of his youth doth lie,As the death-bed whereon it must expireConsumed with that which it was nourish'd by.This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
William Shakespeare
Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.
Pablo Neruda
We took such care of tomorrow, but died on the way there.
Warsan Shire
No more let life divide what death can join together.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us
Jim Morrison
I died for beauty but was scarceAdjusted in the tomb,When one who died for truth was lainIn an adjoining room.He questioned softly why I failed?"For beauty," I replied."And I for truth, the two are one;We brethren are," he said.And so, as kinsmen met a night,We talked between the rooms,Until the moss had reached our lips,And covered up our names.
Emily Dickinson
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something last longer than we do.
Hermann Hesse
Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.
Edgar Allan Poe
Dying should come easy:like a freight train youdon't hear whenyour back isturned.
Charles Bukowski
Darkling I listen; and, for many a timet I have been half in love with easeful Death,t Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,t To take into the air my quiet breath;t Now more than ever seems it rich to die,To cease upon the midnight with no pain,While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroadt In such an ecstasy!
John Keats
True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am, but why will say that I am mad?! The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
Edgar Allan Poe
I’ll never speak to God again.
Sylvia Plath
The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.
Sylvia Plath
Relationships take up energy; letting go of them, psychiatrists theorize, entails mental work. When you lose someone you were close to, you have to reassess your picture of the world and your place in it. The more your identity was wrapped up with the deceased, the more difficult the loss.
Meghan O'Rourke
Wanting to Die Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.Then the almost unnameable lust returns.Even then I have nothing against life. I know well the grass blades you mention,the furniture you have placed under the sun.But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask why build.Twice I have so simply declared myself,have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,have taken on his craft, his magic.In this way, heavy and thoughtful,warmer than oil or water,I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.I did not think of my body at needle point.Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.Suicides have already betrayed the body.Still-born, they don't always die,but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweetthat even children would look on and smile.To thrust all that life under your tongue!—that, all by itself, becomes a passion.Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,and yet she waits for me, year after year,to so delicately undo an old wound,to empty my breath from its bad prison.Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,leaving the page of the book carelessly open,something unsaid, the phone off the hookand the love, whatever it was, an infection.
Anne Sexton
He Is Not DeadI cannot say, and I will not sayThat he is dead. He is just away.With a cheery smile, and a wave of the hand,He has wandered into an unknown landAnd left us dreaming how very fairIt needs must be, since he lingers there.And you—oh you, who the wildest yearnFor an old-time step, and the glad return,Think of him faring on, as dearIn the love of There as the love of Here.Think of him still as the same. I say,He is not dead—he is just away.
James Whitcomb Riley
When it comes to death, we know that laughter and tears are pretty much the same thing.And so, laughing and crying, we said good-bye to my grandmother. And when we said goodbye to one grandmother, we said good-bye to all of them.Each funeral was a funeral for all of us.We lived and died together.All of us laughed when they lowered my grandmother into the ground.And all of us laughed when they covered her with dirt.And all of us laughed as we walked and drove and rode our way back to our lonely, lonely houses.
Sherman Alexie
Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave bereft I am not there. I have not left.
Mary Elizabeth Frye
Finally there is nothing here for death to take away.
Charles Bukowski
The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.
Sylvia Plath
LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperweight,My face a featureless, fineJew linen.Peel off the napkinO my enemy.Do I terrify?--The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?The sour breathWill vanish in a day.Soon, soon the fleshThe grave cave ate will beAt home on meAnd I a smiling woman.I am only thirty.And like the cat I have nine times to die.This is Number Three.What a trashTo annihilate each decade.What a million filaments.The peanut-crunching crowdShoves in to seeThem unwrap me hand and foot--The big strip tease.Gentlemen, ladiesThese are my handsMy knees.I may be skin and bone,Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.The first time it happened I was ten.It was an accident.The second time I meantTo last it out and not come back at all.I rocked shutAs a seashell.They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.DyingIs an art, like everything else.I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I've a call.It's easy enough to do it in a cell.It's easy enough to do it and stay put.It's the theatricalComeback in broad dayTo the same place, the same face, the same bruteAmused shout:'A miracle!'That knocks me out.There is a chargeFor the eyeing of my scars, there is a chargeFor the hearing of my heart--It really goes.And there is a charge, a very large chargeFor a word or a touchOr a bit of bloodOr a piece of my hair or my clothes.So, so, Herr Doktor.So, Herr Enemy.I am your opus,I am your valuable,The pure gold babyThat melts to a shriek.I turn and burn.Do not think I underestimate your great concern.Ash, ash--You poke and stir.Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--A cake of soap, A wedding ring,A gold filling.Herr God, Herr LuciferBewareBeware.Out of the ashI rise with my red hairAnd I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath
I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.
Catherynne M. Valente
Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.
George Gordon Byron
Even in the grave, all is not lost.
Edgar Allan Poe
When writers die they become books, which is, after all, not too bad an incarnation.", The New Yorker, July 7, 1986]
Jorge Luis Borges
I know, too, that death is the only god who comes when you call.
Roger Zelazny
I have outlasted all desire,My dreams and I have grown apart;My grief alone is left entire,The gleamings of an empty heart.The storms of ruthless dispensationHave struck my flowery garland numb,I live in lonely desolationAnd wonder when my end will come.Thus on a naked tree-limb, blastedBy tardy winter's whistling chill,A single leaf which has outlastedIts season will be trembling still.
Alexander Pushkin
I went down to the river,I set down on the bank.I tried to think but couldn't,So I jumped in and sank.
Langston Hughes
To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub.
William Shakespeare
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
Sylvia Plath
I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.
Sylvia Plath
Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.
Anne Sexton
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
John Donne
in this land some of us fuck more than we die but most of us die better than we fuck
Charles Bukowski
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
Edgar Allan Poe
I carry death in my left pocket. Sometimes I take it out and talk to it: "Hello, baby, how you doing? When you coming for me? I'll be ready.
Charles Bukowski