Quotes by Poets - Page 89

There is a crack in everything
Leonard Cohen
... I slipped our wicker bed and walked the sands where we were also roughly repeated: some young couple, "you did," "I didn't," "you sure the fuck did" – they huggedthat bicker to their chests like blankets fighting cold.
Albert Goldbarth
If We Must DieIf we must die, let it not be like hogsHunted and penned in an inglorious spot,While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,Making their mock at our accursèd lot.If we must die, O let us nobly die,So that our precious blood may not be shedIn vain; then even the monsters we defyShall be constrained to honor us though dead!O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!What though before us lies the open grave?Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
Claude McKay
If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.
Charles Bukowski
I wanted something that I could look back on and say, yes, you were fighting too, you burned to be alive, and whatever failure or accident of nature caused you to be killed could be explained by something other than the fact that I'd missed your giving up.
Kevin Powers
When we neared the orchard a flock of birds lit from its outer rows. They hadn't been there long. The branches shook with their absent weight and the birds circled above in the riddy mackerel sky, where they made an artless semaphore. I was afraid, I smelled copper and cheap wine. The sun was up, but a half-moon hung low on the opposite horizon, cutting through the morning sky like a figure from a child's pull-tab book.We were lined along the ditch up to our ankles in a soupy muck. It all seemed in that moment to be the conclusion of a poorly designed experiment in inevitability. Everything was in its proper place, waiting for a pause in time, for the source of all momentum to be stilled, so that what remained would be nothing more than detritus to be tallied up. The world was paper-thin as far as I could tell. And the world was the orchard, and the orchard was what came next. But none of that was true. I was only afraid of dying.
Kevin Powers
We had scar-tissueromance and ours wasa relationship of sayinggoodbye—every timewe fought, every timewe fucked, and every timewe called it quits, beforepicking up our knivesagain
Phil Volatile
What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,What mighty contests rise from trivial things,...
Alexander Pope
The road to hell was paved with the bones of men who did not know when to quit fighting.
Paulette Jiles
I watch the trees all dressed up in the Spring, While posing as they stand in line, Placing their best foot forward, showing off their leaves and fighting for attention,One tree at a time
Charmaine J.Forde
Understanding’s not enough. Understanding’s from outside; merely a function of the mind. [. . .] To enter, that’s the secret. To become the bridge, to crawl into its sap, to sway with it, to rot over centuries as its heartwood rots. When you are the bridge you will know what the bridge knows. It takes time. A lifetime. And skill.
Catherine Fisher
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.
Kahlil Gibran
Do you know, Sandy dear, all my ambitions are for you and Rose. You have got insight, perhaps not quite spiritual, but you're a deep one, and Rose has got instinct.' 'Perhaps not quite spiritual' said Sandy.'Yes,' said Miss Brodie, 'you're right. Rose has got a future by virtue of her instinct.'...'I ought to know because my prime has brought me instinct and insight, both.
Muriel Spark
They may have forgotten how badly they treated you, or they may pretend that they have forgotten. But watch: They will come back to you.
Maya Angelou
Trust your brain to suggest a solution, then have the courage to follow through.
Maya Angelou
I want you to write down your blessings.
Maya Angelou
Macbeth does murder sleep - the innocent sleep,Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, chief nourisher in life's feast.
William Shakespeare
Moons and years pass by and are gone forever, but a beautiful moment shimmers through life a ray of light.
Franz Grillparzer
Everyone is a fuckin' Napoleon.
Ani DiFranco
All my years to this momentAll my roads to this wall.All my words to this silenceAll my pride to this fall.-Songs of Sapphique
Catherine Fisher
I'd like to lose enough weight so that my bones creaked louder than the floor
Stanley Victor Paskavich
There is no cure for madness except the madness as the cure.
Santosh Kalwar
I had no knowledge of divine help, and all the world lost faith in gradual progress.
Joy Davidman
The arrogant elimination of the Djaouts of our world must nerve us to pursue our own combative doctrine, namely: that peaceful cohabitation on this planet demands that while the upholders of any creed are free to adopt their own existential absolutes, the right of others to do the same is thereby rendered implicit and sacrosanct. Thus the creed of inquiry, of knowledge and exchange of ideas, must be upheld as an absolute, as ancient and eternal as any other.
Wole Soyinka
Repudiating the virtues of your world, criminals hopelessly agree to organize a forbidden universe. They agree to live in it. The air there is nauseating: they can breathe it.
Jean Genet
For we, when we feel, evaporate: oh, webreathe ourselves out and away: from ember to ember,yielding us fainter fragrance.
Rainer Maria Rilke
She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly - the thought of the world's concern at her situation - was founded on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought. If she made herself miserable the livelong night and day it was only this much to them - 'Ah,she makes herself unhappy.' If she tried to be cheerful, to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers, the baby, she could only be this idea to them - 'Ah, she bears it very well.' Moreover, alone in a desert island would she have been wretched at what had happened to her? Not greatly. If she could but have been just created, to discover herself as a spouseless mother, with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless child, would the position have caused her to despair? No, she would have taken it calmly, and found pleasures therein. Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations.
Thomas Hardy
Tess's feminine hope - shall we confess it - had been so obstinately recuperative as to revive in her surreptitious visions of a domiciliary intimacy continued long enough to break down his coldness even against his judgement. Though unsophisticated in the usual sense, she was not incomplete; and it would have denoted deficiency of womanhood if she had not instinctively known what an argument lies in propinquity. Nothing else would save her, she knew, if this failed. It was wrong to hope in what was of the nature of strategy, she said to herself; yet that sort of hope she could not extinguish. His last representation had now been made, and it was, as she said, a new view. She had truly never though so far as that, and his lucid picture of possible offspring who would scorn her was one that brought deadly conviction to an honest heart which was humanitarian to its centre. Sheer experience had already taught her that, in some circumstances, there was one thing better than to lead a good life, and that was to be saved from leading any life whatever. Like all who have been previsioned by suffering, she could, in the words of M. Sully-Prudhomme, hear a penal sentence in the fiat, 'You shall be born,' particularly if addressed to potential issue or hers.
Thomas Hardy
Somewhere disappears the religion; however, exists the humanity and somewhere religion alive, but the humanity is dead while each religion teaches it, without that no one can be a human.
Ehsan Sehgal
I am not red or blue. I am red, white and blue. Those are the same colors in my body (my heart, blood and veins). I am only human, and the human race is the only race in which I am an active participant - mind, body and soul.
Suzy Kassem
Hope is believing in something that eludes you. It's a desperate feeling in a desperate situation.
Carroll Bryant
And a young prince must be prudent like that,giving freely while his father livesso that afterwards, in age when fighting startssteadfast companions will stand by himand hold the line.
Seamus Heaney
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
William Shakespeare
On the right, a brigade of trolls. On the left, squabling civil servants. Invasion of zombies. Have I managed to summarize the zeitgeist now?
Martijn Benders
Why is it that you still beguile me –As wind, stone, bird – and all the likes? Why is that you smile on me – With sudden summer lightning strikes?
Anna Akhmatova
But all attractions are alike,' he said. 'They come from an emptiness inside.' He hammered on this chest with his index finger. 'Something's missing and you have to fill it. Books, paintings, people, they're all the same...''A lot of people do without books and paintings.''True,' he said, 'but that doesn't affect the argument.' Paris turned his head to one side and chewed on his lip. 'Of course, nothing ever does the trick. Nobody's really satisfied for long.
Siri Hustvedt
I looked at this man and thought: Oh, how we are going to hurt each other.
Catherynne M. Valente
Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none. Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing
William Shakespeare
What we have here is a war—the war of matter and spirit. In the classical era, spirit was in harmony with matter. Matter used to condense spirit. What was unseen—the ghost of Hamlet’s father—was seen—in the conscience of the king. The spirit was trapped in the matter of theater. The theater made the unseen, seen. In the Romantic era, spirit overwhelms matter. The glass of champagne can’t contain the bubbles. But never in the history of humanity has spirit been at war with matter. And that is what we have today. The war of banks and religion. It’s what I wrote in Prayers of the Dawn, that in New York City, banks tower over cathedrals. Banks are the temples of America. This is a holy war. Our economy is our religion. When I came back to midtown a week after the attack—I mourned—but not in a personal way—it was a cosmic mourning—something that I could not specify because I didn’t know any of the dead. I felt grief without knowing its origin. Maybe it was the grief of being an immigrant and of not having roots. Not being able to participate in the whole affair as a family member but as a foreigner, as a stranger—estranged in myself and confused—I saw the windows of Bergdorf and Saks—what a theater of the unexpected—my mother would have cried—there were only black curtains, black drapes—showing the mourning of the stores—no mannequins, just veils—black veils. When the mannequins appeared again weeks later—none of them had blond hair. I don’t know if it was because of the mourning rituals or whether the mannequins were afraid to be blond—targets of terrorists. Even they didn’t want to look American. They were out of fashion after the Twin Towers fell. To the point, that even though I had just dyed my hair blond because I was writing Hamlet and Hamlet is blond, I went back to my coiffeur immediately and told him—dye my hair black. It was a matter of life and death, why look like an American. When naturally I look like an Arab and walk like an Egyptian.
Giannina Braschi
Every morningI wake up with the newsof bloodshed.I feel my body,desperate to know whetherI’m still alive.
Suman Pokhrel
Everyone's on a journey trying to find their purpose in life. That lost horizon. You'll never truly be happy...until you find it!
Timothy Pina
lose weight, eat backwards.
Benny Bellamacina
If you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you, even though you do not really like it and know that part isn't real.
Qiu Xiaolong
It is so hard for a queer person to become an adult. Deprived of the markers of life's passage, they lolled about in a neverland dreamworld. They didn't get married. They didn't have children. They didn't buy homes or have job-jobs. The best that could be aimed for was an academic placement and a lover who eventually tired of pansexual sport-fucking and settled down with you to raise a rescue animal in a rent-controlled apartment.
Michelle Tea
If love breaks more than a heart, maybe it's a sign and time to step out.
Anthony Liccione
The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:Even as a broken mirror, which the glassIn every fragment multiplies; and makesA thousand images of one that was,The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold, And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,Yet withers on till all without is old,Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold.
George Gordon Byron
when you are brokenand he has left youdo not questionwhether you wereenoughthe problem wasyou were so enoughhe was not able to carry it
Rupi Kaur
I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Hereos. Idols. They're never who you think they are. Shorter. Nastier. Smellier. And when you finally meet them, there's something that makes you want to choke the shit out of them.
Paul Beatty
A dead man who never caused others to die seldom rates a statue.
W.H. Auden
I have made calculations that would beggar your soul. What is it that villains always say at the end of stories? You and I are more alike than you think? Well,” the Marquess took September’s hand in hers and very gently kissed it. “We are. Oh, how alike we are! I feel very warmly towards you, and I only want to protect you, as I wish someone had protected me. Come, September, look out the window with me. It’s not a difficult thing. A show of faith, let’s call it.
Catherynne M. Valente
I think—the hero observes that nothing is so frightening as a labyrinth with no center.
Jorge Luis Borges
I like my coffee black, my beer from Germany, wine from Burgundy, the darker, the better. I like my heroes complicated and brooding, James Dean in oiled leather, leaning on a motorcycle. You know the color. ("Ode to Chocolate")
Barbara Crooker
When you're truly awesome, you know that it's actually a burden and wish day after day to be relieved of such a curse. Think of about 95% of the superheroes.
Criss Jami
If I seem to you to change my state and alter my condition, I do not change my mind. I try always to be Hutten, never to desert myself, but to walk with equanimity through the unequal scenes of life.
Ulrich von Hutten
Don't be afraid to be authentic, show up in the world as you truly are.Be as you mean to be, but be light with it. Love it, give it, share it, laugh at it, walk everywhere with it.Be in the world but not OF it.
Jay Woodman
If chained is where you have been, your ams will always bear marks of the shackles. What you have to lose is your story, your own slant. You'll look at the scars on your arms and see mere ugliness, or you'll take great care to look away from them and see nothing. Either way, you have no words for the story of where you came from.
Barbara Kingsolver
It's not about who you think you know, but about who actually knows you.
Akilnathan Logeswaran
I believe when you integrate charity in your craft and not just think of the fame and riches it would entitle you with, you will feel this true sense of fulfillment. Carry on your mission, of where God destined you to be- to use His gifts in good ways and not just for yourself.
Elizabeth E. Castillo
Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
William Blake