Poetry Quotes - Page 6

On a small table beside his chair were other haphazardly stacked volumes by such poets as Emerson, Whitman, and Wallace Stevens, a dangerous crew to let into your head.

Dean Koontz

Because who hasn't tried to pull their arms from the sleeves of gravity's lead coat?Who doesn't have at least one pair of wax wings out in the garage?

Lucia Perillo

With a little more time, patience, and hard work, and above all with a more sensitive taste for the formal aspects of arts, he would have managed to write mediocre poetry, good enough for a lady’s album – and this is always a gallant thing to do, whatever you may say.

Gustave Flaubert

We say God and the imagination are one . . .How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Wallace Stevens

Poetry is a finikin thing of airThat lives uncertainly and not for longYet radiantly beyond much lustier blurs.

Wallace Stevens

Each poem leads you to the questions it makes sense to ask it.

Helen Vendler

. . . Orpheus struck dumb with hindsight.

A.E. Stallings

Evening came, a paw, to the gray hut by the river.

William Stafford

The bats inebriate the sky . . .

A.E. Stallings

[It is not] the poet's business to use verse as an advanced form of rhetoric, nor to give to political statements the aura of eternal truth.

George Oppen

All paths lead to death, our premature sacrifice for future spawn(from Elixir)

Bryan Murphy

This is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsThis is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.

T.S Eliot

Even though I seem not human, a mute shelfof glucose, bottled blood, machineryto swell the lung and pump the heart—even so,do not put out my life. Let me still glow.

Dudley Randall

Dear friend, I have searched all nightthrough each burnt paper,but I fear I will never findthe formula to let you die

Leonard Cohen

UselessnessLet mine not be the saddest fate of all, To live beyond my greater self; to see My faculties decaying, as the tree Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall Let me hear rather the imperious call, Which all men dread, in my glad morning time, And follow death ere I have reached my prime, Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall. The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day Is kinder than the calm that lets it last, Unhappy witness of its own decay. May no man ever look on me and say, 'She lives, but all her usefulness is past.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

A rose lay open in full bloomand, looking from my garden room,I watched the sun-baked flower fill with rain.It seemed so fragile,resting there,and such a silence filled the air,the beauty of the moment caused me pain."What more?" I thought. "There must be more."As if in answer then, I sawone weighty drop that caused my rose to fall.It trembled, then cascaded downto earth just staining gentle brownand, since then, I've felt different.That's all.

Julie Andrews Edwards

The bag I wanted was beyond reason - something to hold my poems, twice as big as the universe and it must be androgynous.

Eileen Myles

Victories turned inside outBut no surrenderCemeteries of remorseThe beaten champion sobbingGhosts move in to shield his tears

Adrienne Rich

There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say hello.

Richard Siken

In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.

W.H. Auden

From chaos to lullabiesI watched herlive my thoughts,and soon enoughshe did becomemy favorite stony.She was everythingand with every wordshe drew me closer.She drew me into her story,a storyI knew I would neverbe able to understand.

Robert M. Drake

There is a reasonthat the worldis not black and white,for chaosdemands color.

Liz Newman

...For I do now know that it is cowardly. We do not have the right to think only of poetry on this earth. It is magical, but utterly selfish.

Hélène Berr

I don’t want safety or guarantees—I want a life worth living.I want to jump off a skyscraperAnd fashion a parachute on the way downOut of my fears and trepidationsBecause sometimes survivalIsn’t the most important thingAnd survivingIsn’t the same as living.

Justin Wetch

Kill the part of you that believes it can't survive without someone else.

Sade Andria Zabala

Under the rough and ridiculous circumstances of life in the Rocky Mountains there was something exciting and vital, full of rude poetry: the heartbeat of the West as it fought its way upward toward civilization.

Wallace Stegner

Not many get to see this side of him. So, if you do, know that you’re lucky.

Liz Newman

...I'm constantly agitated, restless - I work moments like worry beads until I see your face...

John Geddes

willow trees, willow trees they remind me of DesdemonaI'm so damned literaryand at the same time the waters rushing past remindme of nothing

Frank O'Hara

LXXVSo are you to my thoughts as food to life,Or as sweet-season'd showers are to the ground;And for the peace of you I hold such strifeAs 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found.Now proud as an enjoyer, and anonDoubting the filching age will steal his treasure;Now counting best to be with you alone,Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure:Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,And by and by clean starved for a look;Possessing or pursuing no delightSave what is had, or must from you be took. Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day, Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

William Shakespeare

We number nothing that we spend for you;Our duty is so rich, so infinite,That we may do it still without accompt.Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face,That we, like savages, may worship it.

William Shakespeare

If I could write the beauty of your eyesAnd in fresh numbers number all your graces,The age to come would say 'this poet lies! Such heaven never touched earthly faces

William Shakespeare

Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

William Shakespeare

Auden is an accomplished rhymer and Shakespeare is not.

Peter Porter

My beloved has arrived, but rather than greeting him, All I can do is bite the corner of my apron with a blank expression- What an awkward woman am I. My heart has longed for him as hugely and openly as a full moonBut instead I narrow my eyes, and my glance to him Is sharp and narrow as the crescent moon. But then, I'm not the only one who behaves this way. My mother and my mother's mother were as silly and stumbling as I am when they were girls...Still, the love from my heart is overflowing, As bright and crimson as the heated metal in a blacksmith's forge.

Kim Dong Hwa

He lived to near the things he loved to seem poetical.

E.M. Forster

30 cents, two transfers, loveThinking hard about you I got on the bus and paid 30 cents car fare and asked the driver for two transfers before discovering that I was alone.

Richard Brautigan

In the Village IIIWho has removed the typewriter from my desk,so that I am a musician without his pianowith emptiness ahead as clear and grotesqueas another spring? My veins bud, and I am sofull of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.The notes outside are visible; sparrows willline antennae like staves, the way springs were,but the roofs are cold and the great grey riverwhere a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,moves imperceptibly like the accumulatingyears. I have no reason to forgive herfor what I brought on myself. I am past hating,past the longing for Italy where blowing snowabsolves and whitens a kneeling mountain rangeoutside Milan. Through glass, I am waitingfor the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginningof spring, but my hands, my work, feel strangewithout the rusty music of my machine. No wordsfor the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mangeof old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds.

Derek Walcott

…The love of his youthAppeared as in a dreamAnd this ageing loverWent mad with love.The youth robbed him ofReason and his chastity.In pursuit of his Beloved, mad, deranged,He was from kith and kin estranged.The fire of the rose’s cheekBurnt the nightingale’s heart;The laughing flameTormented the devoted moth…

Hafiz Shirazi

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

Emily Dickinson

Consider, O Lord, how You sit atop the sky;like a man in a glass bottom boat.Consider sky elsewhere; worn thin as a mattress.

Cecilia Llompart

Learn to use your third eye and you’ll be able to see beyond the sky. There is no limit, except that which you impose upon yourself.

Melody Lee

Mother Earth, one of my absolute favorite places......where the sounds, the energy, the beauty and the Life pounds into your every fiber of being, letting you Know that you are alive. I will always respect and honor this gift of creation that we call our home.

Peace Gypsy

Sometimes I struggle. Sometimes I falter. Sometimes I live in gray. But always I remember the yarrow you’ve grown in the spaces of my rib cage. I now love with roses from my heart, with lilacs from my mouth.

Elijah Noble El

Now I’msober and Irealize, Ididn’t drink toescape the world,I drank to escapemyself

Phil Volatile

If I stay close to the sea, I will go on well.

Charlotte Eriksson

I mean, have you ever imaginedthe ocean is alive, and needs to tell us something important, and the only way it can talkis by making waves crash, and we just lounge there, drenched in cocoa butter, on towels with crappy novels and volleyballs, sipping spritzers, as the ocean uses all its strength to repeatthe same warning over and over?

Jeffrey McDaniel

Let only the young come, Says the sea. Let them kiss my face And hear me. I am the last word And I tell Where storms and stars come from.

Carl Sandburg

I’ll give you one chance to run,but may your shoulder always whisper in your ear…“It’s best to watch out for men, like me.

Ryan Goodrich

Sugar cane reach up to GodAnd every baby cryingShame the blanket of my nightAnd all my days are dying

Maya Angelou

Strong sun, that bleachThe curtains of my room, can you not renderColourless this dress I wear?—This violent plaidOf purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripeOf thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds doneThrough indolence, high judgments given in haste;The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sometimes you know that you are destined to die, but somehow you are given a parenthesis after the punctuation mark: more years, more time that wasn’t meant for you but still was meant for you, a bridge stretching out into the stars, a confidence built of invisible threads, a miracle.

Lene Fogelberg

If you don't look before the dusk and beyond the dawn, you won't be able to see the sun. (Soar)

Soar

What's not there is.

Cameron Conaway

I'd rather die fighting over great poets than over gods.

Salman Rushdie

Hey, Lou?” he hums, casual as anything.“Hm?”“Wanna hear my poem?”Oh dear god. Seriously?Gritting his teeth to keep from laughing or grinning or falling over his own two feet, Louis arches an inquiring eyebrow, turning to meet Harry’s stare. Of course, the bastard is grinning, proud and loud and pleased.Harry blinks, slow enough that Louis briefly wonders if the planet’s begun to rotate slower, has maybe begun to rotate backwards, even. “It goes, ‘He likes me, too.

Velvetoscar

I swearwe'd lose ourhearts ifthey weren'twith elasticand butterflypinclasped safelyin.

Todd Boss

Now, standing here, it is clear as day: more than anything else, you want to find words for what you feel and think and everything that is dark. And then this terrifying thought hits you: Yes, your father wrote poetry to find a language for his wounds. Yes, you in your own way have become your father

Bilal Tanweer

Every attempt to fix eternity is an escape from reality. I will be plaguing my days with moments and minutes. For ever is too far!

Rossana Condoleo

We shall not cease from explorationAnd the end of all our exploringWill be to arrive where we startedAnd know the place for the first time.Through the unknown, remembered gateWhen the last of earth left to discoverIs that which was the beginning;At the source of the longest riverThe voice of the hidden waterfallAnd the children in the apple-treeNot known, because not looked forBut heard, half-heard, in the stillnessBetween two waves of the sea.Quick now, here, now, always—A condition of complete simplicity(Costing not less than everything)And all shall be well andAll manner of thing shall be wellWhen the tongues of flames are in-foldedInto the crowned knot of fireAnd the fire and the rose are one.

T.S Eliot

Previous 1 … 4 5 6 7 8 … 121 Next

Poetry Quotes - Page 6

Related Topics