Quotes by Poets - Page 477

If I had a shiny gun I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folks that cause me pains :)
Dorothy Parker
Beasts bounding through time. Van Gogh writing his brother for paintsHemingway testing his shotgunCeline going broke as a doctor of medicinethe impossibility of being humanVillon expelled from Paris for being a thiefFaulkner drunk in the gutters of his townthe impossibility of being humanBurroughs killing his wife with a gunMailer stabbing histhe impossibility of being humanMaupassant going mad in a rowboatDostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shotCrane off the back of a boat into the propellerthe impossibilitySylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potatoHarry Crosby leaping into that Black SunLorca murdered in the road by the Spanish troopsthe impossibilityArtaud sitting on a madhouse benchChatterton drinking rat poisonShakespeare a plagiaristBeethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafnessthe impossibility the impossibilityNietzsche gone totally madthe impossibility of being humanall too humanthis breathingin and outout and inthese punksthese cowardsthese championsthese mad dogs of glorymoving this little bit of light towardusimpossibly
Charles Bukowski
You are the Truth from foot to brow. Now, what else would you like to know?
Jalaluddin Rumi
[I]t is the wine that leads me on,the wild winethat sets the wisest man to singat the top of his lungs,laugh like a fool – it drives theman to dancing... it eventempts him to blurt out storiesbetter never told.
Homer
My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.
Audre Lorde
I have a duty to speak the truth as I see it and share not just my triumphs, not just the things that felt good, but the pain, the intense, often unmitigated pain. It is important to share how I know survival is survival and not just a walk throught the rain.
Audre Lorde
In the cherry blossom's shadethere's no such thingas a stranger.
Kobayashi Issa
El que lee mucho y anda mucho, ve mucho y sabe mucho.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true.
Criss Jami
At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right
Miguel de Unamuno
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?The world would split open.
Muriel Rukeyser
It's not about going around trying to stir up trouble. As long as you're honest and you articulate what you believe to be true, somebody somewhere will become your enemy whether you like it or not.
Criss Jami
Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”For the soul walks upon all paths.The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
Kahlil Gibran
Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.
Kahlil Gibran
At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you.
Criss Jami
Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
Erica Jong
To be great, be whole;Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.Be whole in everything. Put all you areInto the smallest thing you do.So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendorBecause it blooms up above.
Fernando Pessoa
I will no longer mutilate and destroy myself in order to find a secret behind the ruins.
Hermann Hesse
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
John Keats
Don't assume, ask. Be kind. Tell the truth. Don't say anything you can't stand behind fully. Have integrity. Tell people how you feel.
Warsan Shire
Trust starts with truth and ends with truth.
Santosh Kalwar
In a room wherepeople unanimously maintaina conspiracy of silence,one word of truthsounds like a pistol shot.
Czesław Miłosz
This above all: to thine own self be true.
William Shakespeare
I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.
Audre Lorde
What's done cannot be undone.
William Shakespeare
Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.
Criss Jami
When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.
Margaret Atwood
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
Wallace Stevens
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
Walt Whitman
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.
Maya Angelou
Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.
T.S Eliot
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Kahlil Gibran
The only truth is music.
Jack Kerouac
There is more for us to gain through love than hate.
Suzy Kassem
Without sound,There would be no music.And without music,There would be no life.And without a life force,There would be no matter.But it does not matter -Because what is matter,If there is no light?
Suzy Kassem
I was transformed the dayMy ego shattered,And all the superficial, materialThings that matteredTo me before,Suddenly ceasedTo matter.
Suzy Kassem
YOU ARE JUSTYou are not just for the right or left,but for what is right over the wrong.You are not just rich or poor,but always wealthy in the mind and heart.You are not perfect, but flawed.You are flawed, but you are just.You may just be conscious human,but you are also a magnificentreflection of God.
Suzy Kassem
With his night-cap and his night-shirt tatters,He botches up the loop-holes in the structure of the world.
Heinrich Heine
Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
William Blake
Une philosophie doit etre portative.
Paul Valéry
Cada época, cada cultura, cada costume e tradição tem seu próprio estilo, tem sua delicadeza e sua severidade, suas belezas e crueldades, aceitam certos sofrimentos como naturais, sofrem pacientemente certas desgraças. O verdadeiro sofrimento, o verdadeiro inferno da vida humana reside ali onde se chocam duas culturas ou duas religiões. Um homem da antiguidade, que tivesse de viver na Idade Média, haveria de sentir-se tão afogado quanto um selvagem se sentiria em nossa civilização. Há momentos em que toda uma geração cai entre dois estilos de vida, e toda evidência, toda moral, toda salvação e inocência ficam perdidos para ela. Naturalmente isso não nos atinge da mesma maneira.
Hermann Hesse
What about you, Snipes?" Dunbar asked. "You think there to be mountain lions up here or is it just folks' imaginings?"Snipes pondered the question a few moments before speaking.They's many a man of science would claim there aint because you got no irredeemable evidence like panther scat or fur or tooth or tail. In other words, some part of the animal in questions. Or better yet having the actual critter itself, the whole think kit and caboodle head to tail, which all your men of science argue is the best proof of all a thing exists, whether it be a panther, or a bird, or even a dinosaur."To put it another way, if you was to stub your toe and tell the man of science what happened he'd not believe a word of it less he could see how it'd stoved up or was bleeding. But your philosophers and theologians and such say there’s things in the world that’s every bit as real even though you can’t see them.”Like what?” Dunbar asked.Well,” Snipes said. “They’s love, that’s one. And courage. You can’t see neither of them, but they’re real. And air, of course. That’s one of your most important examples. You wouldn’t be alive a minute if there wasn’t air, but nobody’s ever seen a single speck of it.”… “All I’m saying is there is a lot more to this old world than meets the eye.”… “And darkness. You can’t see it no more than you can see air, but when its all around you sure enough know it.” (Serena, 65-66)
Ron Rash
The philosophy of poetry must acknowledge that the poetic act has no past, at least no recent past, in which its preparation and appearance could be followed.
Gaston Bachelard
Weather is a purely personal matter. There is no such thing as a climate that is cold or hot, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. People take it upon themselves to create a fantasy in their imagination and call it weather. There's only one climate in the world, but the message that nature sends is interpreted according to strictly personal, non-transferable rules.
Álvaro Mutis
Is it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all.—Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it
Herman Melville
Rainer Maria Rilke greeted and wrestled with the angels of his Duino Elegies in the solitude of a castle surrounded by white cliffs tall trees and the sea. I greeted most of mine in the solitude of a house that still vibrated with the throbs of a singular life that had helped shape many lives and with the ache of attempts to render useful service to that life. The River of Winged Dreams was therefore constructed as a link between dimensions of past and future emotions and intellect and matter and spirit.
Aberjhani
Tis the wink of an eye, 'tis the draught of a breath,From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud-Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
William Knox
Not telling is just as interesting as telling I have found. Why speech, that short verbal journey from inside to outside can be excrutiating under certain circumstances is fascinating.
Siri Hustvedt
We chart delusions through collective agreement.
Siri Hustvedt
If your treated like a puppet find a new ball of string
Benny Bellamacina
I pretend not to be a champion of that same naked virtue called truth, to the very outrance. I can consent that her charms be hidden with a veil, were it but for decency's sake.
Walter Scott
To be a philosopher, just reverse everything you have ever been told...and have a sense of humor doing it.
Criss Jami
One does not have to be a philosopher to be a successful artist, but he does have to be an artist to be a successful philosopher. His nature is to view the world in an unpredictable albeit useful light.
Criss Jami
It is the philosophers, theologians, and evangelists who are said to be filled with pride and bigotry due to the strong convictions that they represent. On the contrary, teachings can be either taken or dismissed; whereas voting is the only thing the average person can do to force everyone to live how they would prefer. A simple vote is among the largest yet most acceptable forms of bigotry, and that is because people play the card only when they feel that in doing so it conveniences themselves.
Criss Jami
If you use a philosophy education well, you can get your foot in the door of any industry you please. Industries are like the blossoms on a tree while philosophy is the trunk - it holds the tree together, but it often goes unnoticed.
Criss Jami
How charming is divine Philosophy! Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute, And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, Where no crude surfet raigns.
John Milton
I can blend words easily with my pen, and show concepts from deep within. Yet not everyone gets the message I send. So why do I even let these words begin? Maybe they will soak in one day at the right time. When the readers on a new path to find. So for now I'll continue to drop ink and not worry about what other people think.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Furthermore, as the body suffers the horrors of disease and the pangs of pain, so we see the mind stabbed with anguish, grief and fear. What more natural than that it should likewise have a share in death?
Titus Lucretius Carus
By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I - unused to your ways though I am - would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths.These are worth it. These are what I have come for.
Margaret Atwood