Quotes by Poets - Page 85

We all want to break our orbits, float like a satellite gone wild in space, run the risk of disintegration. We all want to take our lives in our own hands and hurl them out among the stars.
David Bottoms
When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deserves such scrutiny is that it represents pure, undiluted time in all its repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor.Boredom is your window on the properties of time that one tends to ignore to the likely peril of one's mental equilibrium. It is your window on time's infinity. Once this window opens, don't try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open.
Joseph Brodsky
Almost as a rule, political dissidents were writers.
Dejan Stojanovic
From centuries ago before the dawn of civilization, I have been wandering. I am the wanderer. I can't stay at one place. I am destined to wander from place to place!And I keep wandering in search of a nothingness. The river embraces me and guides me to swim inside her and to drink the nectar of love from her bosom. She tells me her secrets and I tell her mine. She makes me sensitive and soft.The mountain greets me with respect and guides me to traverse the rocks and crevices of its body! He is strong and vigorous and he appreciates my stamina and toughness.After dusk in the night, the stars smile at me and they show me light to travel in the darkness. They tell me their stories and I tell them mine.The moon embalms me with her love and she kisses me good night. The nightingale sings her song of love when I take rest in the arms of darkness in the night!And after the dawn of the morning, the sun greets me and acknowledges my spirit and strength!I am the wanderer and I keep wandering in search of a nothingness.I am the wanderer and wandering is my destiny!
Avijeet Das
The biggest liar in the world is They Say.
Douglas Malloch
Lies have short shelf lives. Lies go bad. Lies rot and stink up the joint.
Sherman Alexie
Not telling everything you know is not the same as telling a lie.
Glenda Bailey-Mershon
I am sick with caring.
Charles Bukowski
You can own an elephant or a bank or power thereof but if there's no personal breast bliss all you own is a lot of dead atoms and ideas.
Allen Ginsberg
People usually seek to join a religious system in order to gain the eternal bliss and freedom of the soul. But belonging somewhere; anywhere is not freedom. Free is the wind. You need to become the wind, not wanting to know how and why, but only to experience this quality of freedom that leads to the original “religion”. There the soul is finally ONE and aligned with anything.
Grigoris Deoudis
Hast thou found out, Voltaire, that it is bliss to die, And does thy hideous smile over thy bleached bones fly?
Alfred de Musset
Slick pimps, bribing civic kingpins, distill gin in stills, spiking drinks with illicit pills which might bring bliss.
Christian Bök
That most pleasant weather to feel is the one never felt.
Criss Jami
Just one single word of kindness builds bridges for the rest of the day.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Who wants to pluck roses must love their thorns.
Sir Kristian Goldmund Aumann
Love is a choice. It's a decision.' She told us, 'It flows into, through, and out of each person like a river. If you try to stop it, it'll sneak around until It finds another heart and breaks through.
Charles Martin
When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand- she's as good as any other; they'll be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.
Thomas Hardy
But despite the fact that Reardan is a tiny town, people can still be strangers to each other.
Sherman Alexie
Truth is not the same for everyone whereas facts are.
John Day
There's some ill planet reigns:I must be patient till the heavens lookWith an aspect more favourable. Good my lords,I am not prone to weeping, as our sexCommonly are; the want of which vain dewPerchance shall dry your pities: but I haveThat honourable grief lodged here which burnsWorse than tears drown: beseech you all, my lords,With thoughts so qualified as your charitiesShall best instruct you, measure me; and soThe king's will be perform'd!
William Shakespeare
Interest makes some people blind and others quick-sighted.
Francis Beaumont
Those who have never seen themselves surrounded on all sides by the sea can never possess an idea of the world, and of their relation to it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Friends are generally of the same sex, for when men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions, their reasons are always different.
George Santayana
Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosopher to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so helplessly lost to all honourable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what us, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera glasses at home.
Herman Melville
...yet see how elastic our stiff prejudices grow when once love comes to bend them.
Herman Melville
I fail to remember, the mind has fuses.
B.S. Johnson
from the beginning, through themiddle years and up to theend:too bad, too bad, too bad.
Charles Bukowski
‎The stars are like the trees. Each one reminds us that we should still the greed in our heart. Each tree, each star, teaches us the ways of peace.
Alfred A. Yuson
Two bubbles found they had rainbows on their curves. They flickered out saying: "It was worth being a bubble, just to have held that rainbow thirty seconds.
Carl Sandburg
He picked up one of Lorna's roses and set it in my lap. "Here." I picked it up and smelled it. He poked me in the shoulder. "See what I mean? Thorns don't stop you from sniffing. Or putting them in a vase on the kitchen table. You work around them.... Cause the rose is worth it... Think what you'd miss.
Charles Martin
Well, suppose we remain upon earth, after all? Suppose we bravely accept the death of our dreams at the same time as the death of our bodies? This beyond is decidedly uncertain, quite vague and mobile. I do not believe that it exists everywhere; I believe that it is nowhere except in our infantile imaginations. Born with us, it will end at the same moment that we do, to be born anew in our posterity. The beyond is the earthly tomorrow, as we bequeath it to our heirs and as they modify it by their efforts and in accordance with their tastes.
Rémy de Gourmont
Adam says I isolate. He is addicted to telling me that I spend too much time in my head. It’s an unhealthy behavior. Look, I don’t see how not bothering other people with your screwed-up vision of the world constitutes unhealthy behavior.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
You only had to choose which me to talk to, for, you know, we all change our manners, depending on who has come to chat. One doesn’t behave at all the same way to a grandfather as to a bosom friend, to a professor as to a curious niece.
Catherynne M. Valente
A sense of humour is a sense of proportion.
Kahlil Gibran
What's foreign one can't always keep quite clear of,For good things, oft, are not so near;A German can't endure the French to see or hear of,Yet drinks their wines with hearty cheer.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Christian, Jew, Muslim, shaman, Zoroastrian, stone, ground, mountain, river, each has a secret way of being with the mystery, unique and not to be judged
Jalaluddin Rumi
Is then no nook of English ground secureFrom rash assault?
William Wordsworth
Life is too short to waste your time with bad books.
Michael Krüger
I have learned through dreams more wisdom, than by reading hundreds of books.
Kristian Goldmund Aumann
An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best.
Michel Houellebecq
I hate to read books but a friend said he read the dictionary and that the Zebra did it.
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Never judge a book by its "spine".
Stanley Victor Paskavich
What is it with you and that book?"Rafael laughed. "We have a personal relationship.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
I have an affection for a great city. I feel safe in the neighborhood of man, and enjoy the sweet security of the streets.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Sometimes a woman is afraid to be without security or without certainty, for even a short time. She has more excuses than dogs have hairs. She must just simply dive in and stand not knowing what will happen next.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
He shall spurn fate, scorn death, and bear His hopes 'bove wisdom, grace and fear:And you all know, securityIs mortals' chiefest enemy.
William Shakespeare
...I couldn't see him anymore, and I couldn't see anybody, and I knew what the loneliness of the long-distance runner running across country felt like, realizing that as far as I was concerned this feeling was the only honesty and realness there was in the world and I knowing it would be no different ever, no matter what I felt at odd times, and no matter what anybody else tried to tell me
Alan Sillitoe
So as soon as I tell myself I'm the first man ever to be dropped into the world, and as soon as I take that first flying leap into the frosty grass of an early morning when even birds haven't the heart to whistle, I get to thinking, and that's what I like. I go my rounds in a dream, turning at lane or footpath corners without knowing I'm turning, leaping brooks without knowing they're there, and shouting good morning to the early cow-milker without seeing him. It's a treat being a long-distance runner, out in the world by yourself with not a soul to make you bad-tempered or tell you what to do.
Alan Sillitoe
O.K. I'm running out of appetite. Let this swirl— a bit like Crab Nebula— do for now.
Charles Olson
Haste denies all acts their dignity.
Dante Alighieri
There was hardly a touch of earth in her love for Clare. To her sublime trustfulness he was all that goodness could be—knew all that a guide, philosopher, and friend should know. She thought every line in the contour of his person the perfection of masculine beauty, his soul the soul of a saint, his intellect that of a seer. The wisdom of her love for him, as love, sustained her dignity; she seemed to be wearing a crown. The compassion of his love for her, as she saw it, made her lift up her heart to him in devotion. He would sometimes catch her large, worshipful eyes, that had no bottom to them looking at him from their depths, as if she saw something immortal before her.
Thomas Hardy
Take care of your common sense, and your dignity will take care of itsself
Carolyn Wells
The god abandons AntonyWhen at the hour of midnight an invisible choir is suddenly heard passingwith exquisite music, with voices ― Do not lament your fortune that at last subsides, your life’s work that has failed, your schemes that have proved illusions. But like a man prepared, like a brave man, bid farewell to her, to Alexandria who is departing. Above all, do not delude yourself, do not say that it is a dream, that your ear was mistaken. Do not condescend to such empty hopes. Like a man for long prepared, like a brave man, like the man who was worthy of such a city, go to the window firmly, and listen with emotion but not with the prayers and complaints of the coward (Ah! supreme rapture!) listen to the notes, to the exquisite instruments of the mystic choir,and bid farewell to her, to Alexandria whom you are losing.
Constantinos P. Cavafis
How to hold the dignity; one should prevent, to be a toy in the hands of others. Consequently, one stands independently with its dignity; otherwise toy stays toy for another's purpose and pleasure, nothing else.
Ehsan Sehgal
the very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent. Yes, we are compelled to make peace, we submit to force majeure, but leave us at least a piece of clothing to cover our nudity. This is the motivation behind every formula of diplomatic contrivance that is sometimes described as face-saving, and wise indeed is the victor who knows that, in order to shield his own rear from the elements, he must not denude his opponents.
Wole Soyinka
I am concerned with facts of quite unverifiable intrinsic value, but which, by their absolutely unexpected violently fortuitous character, and the kind of associations of suspect ideas they provoke.
André Breton
He had a respect for facts maybe this was one.
Anne Carson
He who knows most grieves most for wasted time.
Dante Alighieri
Life was not to be sitting in hot amorphic leisure in my backyard idly writing or not-writing, as the spirit moved me. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing — singing, laughing, learning. The responsibility, the awful responsibility of managing (profitably) 12 hours a day for 10 weeks is rather overwhelming when there is nothing, noone, to insert an exact routine into the large unfenced acres of time — which it is so easy to let drift by in soporific idling and luxurious relaxing. It is like lifting a bell jar off a securely clockwork-like functioning community, and seeing all the little busy people stop, gasp, blow up and float in the inrush, (or rather outrush,) of the rarified scheduled atmosphere — poor little frightened people, flailing impotent arms in the aimless air. That's what it feels like: getting shed of a routine. Even though one had rebelled terribly against it, even then, one feels uncomfortable when jounced out of the repetitive rut. And so with me. What to do? Where to turn? What ties, what roots? as I hang suspended in the strange thin air of back-home?
Sylvia Plath
One always has time enough, if one will apply it well.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe