Life Quotes

TO what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd: 'I Myself am Heav'n and Hell

~ Omar Khayyám

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.

~ Roberto Bolaño

APPLY WITHINYou once told meYou wanted to findYourself in the world -And I told you toFirst apply within,To discover the worldwithin you.You once told meYou wanted to saveThe world from all its wars -And I told you toFirst save yourselfFrom the world,And all the warsYou put yourselfThrough.APPLY WITHIN by Suzy Kassem

~ Suzy Kassem

I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again to one’s eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life goes by uncherished. ‘This may be my last moon,’ I sighed, feeling a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of The Odyssey.

~ Roman Payne

You must burn. Burn higher. Burn for everything you have ever wanted. For everything you have ever lost, for every crack in your heart and every fraction of every irreplaceable moment. Burn high for love. For fear. For life. Burn as fast and as long as you can. You must burn, burn higher. Because nothing in this world will kill you faster than a dying fire.

~ Mia Hollow

I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe--but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry--poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs--is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.

~ David Byrne

So come to the pond, or the river of your imagination, or the harbor of your longing,and put your lips to the world.And live your life.

~ Mary Oliver

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.And be it gash or gold it will not comeAgain in this identical disguise.

~ Gwendolyn Brooks

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!As tho’ to breathe were life!

~ Alfred Tennyson

In my darkest night,when the moon was coveredand I roamed through wreckage,a nimbus-clouded voicedirected me:“Live in the layers,not on the litter.”Though I lack the artto decipher it,no doubt the next chapterin my book of transformationsis already written.I am not done with my changes.

~ Stanley Kunitz

A tough life needs a tough language—and that is what poetry is. That is what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is.

~ Jeanette Winterson

Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.

~ Paul Valéry

This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.

~ Anna Akhmatova

I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.

~ Roger Zelazny

I wanted the past to go away, I wantedto leave it, like another country; I wantedmy life to close, and openlike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the songwhere it fallsdown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;I wantedto hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalivefor a little while.

~ Mary Oliver

What makes us leave what we love best?What is it inside us that keeps erasing itselfWhen we need it most,That sends us into uncertainty for its own sakeAnd holds us flush there until we begin to love itAnd have to begin again?What is it within our own lives we decline to liveWhenever we find it, making our days unendurable,And nights almost visionless?I still don't know yet, but I do it.

~ Charles Wright

I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrowfor I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspiredbut empty and weary from drinking too much at all timesand I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speakfor I don’t speak muchat alland my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too muchor not at alland never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am nota poembut an elegyat my bestbut unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,but others are not.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

won't you celebrate with mewhat i have shaped intoa kind of life? i had no model.born in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did i see to be except myself?i made it uphere on this bridge betweenstarshine and clay,my one hand holding tightmy other hand; come celebratewith me that everydaysomething has tried to kill meand has failed.

~ Lucille Clifton

We, all who live, haveA life that is livedAnd another life that is thought,And the only life we haveIt's the one that is dividedIn right or wrong.

~ Fernando Pessoa

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?

~ W.h. Davies

I had forgotten. Disgust shadows desire.Another life is never safely envied.

~ Robert Wells

Air goes in and outof my nose, throat, lungs, blood, heartbrain - and so I am

~ Matthew Quick

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness -And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

~ Omar Khayyám

A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.

~ Wisława Szymborska

When I say that I love animals, I mean to say that I am IN love with them. Because they don't know evil and have never been tempted by it. Because they are the purest image of any higher being I have ever known. Because their souls are made of a much larger magic than my own, and if you let them, they will show it to you. Because this world is theirs, they were here first. And we should all love them a little more for graciously allowing us to have so much of it.

~ Mia Hollow

Know that we have met before and that we will meet again. I will find my way to you in the next life, and every life after that.

~ Mia Hollow

In the boundaryless forests, there’re dancers of nude.Yet in the confines of pasture, there’s promise of food.On which is your side?Ô, but tarry and bide,ere you decide,in both do confide.

~ Roman Payne

For it is up to you and meto take solacein nostalgia's armsand our abilityto create the everlastingfrom fleeting moments.

~ Sanober Khan

Had we but world enough, and time

~ Andrew Marvell

And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see, --A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a quickening gustOf wind blew up to me and thrustInto my face a miracleOf orchard-breath, and with the smell, --I know not how such things can be! --I breathed my soul back into me.Ah! Up then from the ground sprang IAnd hailed the earth with such a cryAs is not heard save from a manWho has been dead, and lives again.About the trees my arms I wound;Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;I raised my quivering arms on high;I laughed and laughed into the sky

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life is a poem most people never read.

~ Laurence Overmire

The way through the worldIs more difficult to find than the way beyond it.

~ Wallace Stevens

Know that I loved you and that I belonged to you. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.

~ Mia Hollow

Robots are like Mars: they needgirls. Boys won't do,the memesoup is all wrong. They stompwhen they should kissand they're none too keenon having things shoved inside them...It's not a robotuntil you put a girl inside. Sometimes I feel like that. A junkyard the Company forgot to put a girl in.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.

~ Ted Hughes

I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.

~ Anna Kamieńska

A young gratuitous smile; trust and distrust;Promiscuities of bed and board and road; The one assured treasureA life, in recollection, truly possessed.

~ Robert Wells

My heart was full of softening showers,I used to swing like this for hours,I did not care for war or death,I was glad to draw my breath.

~ Stevie Smith

A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

~ Jim Harrison