Quotes by Poets - Page 481

I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am;Maelström of passions in that hidden seaWhose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me;And in small compass the dark waters cram.
Mervyn Peake
Deliverance is not for me in renunciation. I feel the embrace of freedom in a thousand bonds of delight.
Rabindranath Tagore
We live in deeds not years In thoughts not breaths In feelings not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels noblest, acts the best.
Philip James Bailey
What a lover’s heart knows let no man’s brain dispute.
Aberjhani
To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.
Barbara Kingsolver
But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.
José Martí
I am dead because I lack desire,I lack desire because I think I possess.I think I possess because I do not try to give.In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;Seeing that you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing:Seeing that you are nothing, you desire to become;In desiring to become, you begin to live.
René Daumal
The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly.
Wallace Stevens
YOU are the big drop of dew under the lotus leaf, I am the smaller one on its upper side,'said the dewdrop to the lake.
Rabindranath Tagore
And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, "Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!
Charles Baudelaire
Pactum serva" - "Keep the faith
Horace
No man was ever yet a great poet, without at the same time being a profound philosopher.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
I strive for perfection - I settle for satisfaction
Carroll Bryant
A man leaves his great house because he's boredWith life at home, and suddenly returns,Finding himself no happier abroad.He rushes off to his villa driving like mad,You'ld think he's going to a house on fire,And yawns before he's put his foot inside,Or falls asleep and seeks oblivion,Or even rushes back to town again.So each man flies from himself (vain hope, becauseIt clings to him the more closely against his will)And hates himself because he is sick in mindAnd does not know the cause of his disease.
Titus Lucretius Carus
If you wake up tired, you’ve been chasing dreams. If you go to bed tired, your making your dreams happen.
Benny Bellamacina
Nothing is as it seems, but something is everything it is made out to be.
Carroll Bryant
He who is more mindful of one, loses the love and the faith of both.
Kahlil Gibran
Rockabye Baby, in the treetopDont you know a treetopis no safe place to rock?And who put you up there,and your cradle too?Baby,I think someone down herehas got it in for you!
Shel Silverstein
Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whenever I think of something but can't think of what it was I was thinking of, I can't stop thinking until I think I'm thinking of it again. I think I think too much.
Criss Jami
I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion.
Aleister Crowley
Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.
Edith Sitwell
Life... is a paradise to what we fear of death.
William Shakespeare
A Paradox, the doughnut hole. Empty space, once, but now they've learned to market even that. A minus quantity; nothing, rendered edible. I wondered if they might be used-metaphorically, of course-to demonstrate the existence of God. Does naming a sphere of nothingness transmute it into being?
Margaret Atwood
Too lazy to be ambitious,I let the world take care of itself.Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?Listening to the night rain on my roof,I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.
Ryōkan
A prison becomes a home when you have the key.
George Sterling
Yet the ivory gods, And the ebony gods, And the gods of diamond-jade, Are only silly puppet gods That people themselves Have made.-
Langston Hughes
Philosophy is really nostalgia, the desire to be at home.
Novalis
Whatever one man does, it is as if all men did it. For that reason, it is not unfair that one disobedience in a garden should contaminate all humanity; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew should be sufficient to save it.
Jorge Luis Borges
Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave and eats a bread it does not harvest. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening. Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block. Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again. Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.
Kahlil Gibran
There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery
Dante Alighieri
A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.
José Martí
Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of man’s inhumanity to man.
Aberjhani
Un-winged and naked, sorrow surrenders its crown to a throne called grace.
Aberjhani
All the world's a stage.
William Shakespeare
The only thing standing between you and your dreams is ... reluctance.
Carroll Bryant
I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.
Criss Jami
Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.
Barbara Kingsolver
Each star is a mirror reflecting the truth inside you.
Aberjhani
Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.
Catherynne M. Valente
The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses.
Edith Södergran
The moment you stop trying to become a better person, is the moment you start to become worse than what you already are.
Carroll Bryant
Fas est ab hoste doceri.One should learn even from one's enemies.
Ovid
You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.
Aberjhani
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Kahlil Gibran
One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been.
Sophocles
No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
Kahlil Gibran
The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.
William Blake
If you reveal your secrets to the wind,you should not blame the wind forrevealing them to the trees.
Kahlil Gibran
We are the hollow menWe are the stuffed menLeaning togetherHeadpiece filled with straw. Alas!Our dried voices, whenWe whisper togetherAre quiet and meaninglessAs wind in dry grassOr rats' feet over broken glassIn our dry cellarShape without form, shade without colour,Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
T.S Eliot
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding... And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy
Kahlil Gibran
Know thyself? If I knew myself, I'd run away.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The first duty of a man is to think for himself
José Martí
Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.
Charles Bukowski
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter
John Keats
A truth that's told with bad intentBeats all the lies you can invent.
William Blake
We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.
Santosh Kalwar
You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.
Kahlil Gibran
There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
William Shakespeare
And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word.
Dorothy Parker