Famous Quotes

Silver hidden in the gold,Young man hidden in the old,Laughing lord with weeping eyes,Bring king and ring before sunrise! -Hilarion, The Great and Terrible Quest

~ Margaret Lovett

How weightlesswords are when nothing will do.

~ Philip Levine

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old; Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting So much as just finding the gold. It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lease; It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

~ Robert W. Service

I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

~ John Clare

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

~ Sylvia Plath

In visions of the night, like dropping rain, Descend the many memories of pain

~ Aeschylus

look, you know i don't wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn't make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious/...

~ Bob Dylan

I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.

~ Charles Bukowski

Welcome, thou kind deceiver!Thou best of thieves: who, with an easy key,Dost open life, and, unperceived by us,Even steal us from ourselves.

~ John Dryden

Fascists always attack minorities,Which is an irony,'Cos fascists are a minority.

~ Harry Whitewolf

here’s a toast to Alan Turingborn in harsher, darker timeswho thought outside the containerand loved outside the linesand so the code-breaker was brokenand we’re sorryyes now the s-word has been spokenthe official conscience woken– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –and the story does suggesta part 2 to the Turing Test:1. can machines behave like humans?2. can we?

~ Matt Harvey

In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.

~ Aberjhani

Otter! Otter! Otter!Don’t lead cows to slaughter!I love you, and I knowI should’ve told you soon-aBut you didn’t buy the dolphin-safe tuna!

~ T.j. Klune

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

Women Are Not RosesWomen have no beginningonly continualflows.Though rivers flowwomen are notrivers.Women are notrosesthey are not oceansor stars.i would like to tellher this buti think shealready knows.

~ Ana Castillo

The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia.And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.

~ Ezra Pound

A book,a book fullof human touches,of shirts,a bookwithout loneliness, with menand tools,a bookis victory.

~ Pablo Neruda

hate blows a bubble of despair intohugeness world system universe and bang-fear buries a tomorrow under woeand up comes yesterday most green and young

~ E.e. Cummings

I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.

~ Francesca Lia Block

Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.

~ Robert Bly

I sit in my treeI sing like the birdsMy beak is my penMy songs are my poems.

~ David Almond

I don't love her anymoreSoWhy should I walkNightsBy the tavernWhere I drankEvery nightThinking of her?

~ Orhan Veli Kanık

People with yuan fen are destined to like one another;Friendship develops even if a thousand miles apart.But should yuan fen be absent between two individuals,They will remain strangers despite sitting face-to-face

~ Adeline Yen Mah

Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes! What does one do with all this crap?

~ Jack Spicer

Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiò todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.

~ Pablo Neruda

When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.

~ Ted Kooser

Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walkonly on feelings. That faces upwardand in its mirrorreceives heavenly roads, which travelalong themselves.That has learned to walk upon waterwhen it scoops,that walks upon wells,transfiguring every path.That steps into other hands,changes those that are like itinto a landscape:wanders and arrives within them,fills them with arrival.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Prose: words in their best order, poetry: the best words in the best order.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fire of a great mystery.I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

~ Mary Oliver

From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,There's nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends.

~ Hilaire Belloc

World is suddener than we fancy it.

~ Louis Macneice

Love is the only bow on Life’s dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher.It is the air and light of every heart – builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody – for music is the voice of love.Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

There's in my mind a...turbulent moon-ridden girlor old woman, or both,dressed in opals and rags, feathersand torn taffeta,who knows strange songsbut she is not kind.

~ Denise Levertov

Sweet is the lore which nature brings,Our meddling intellectMisshapes the beauteous forms of things,—We murder to dissect.

~ William Wordsworth

Sully suffers from a stutter,simple syllables will clutter,stalling speeches up on beacheslike a sunken sailboat rudder.Sully strains to say his phrases,sickened by the sounds he raises,strings of thoughts come out in knots,he solves his sentences like mazes.At night, he writes his thoughts insteadand sighs as they steadily rush from his head.

~ Bo Burnham

Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power.Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

~ Andrew Marvell

When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first,But a patriot climbedWith a thought in mind:‘Never your duty shirk.’Up the iron ladyHe stealthily made his way,Hanging the bright tricolour,He heroically saved the day.Then, for some strange reason,A mystery to this day,Hitler never climbed the tower,On the ground he had to stay.At last he ordered she be razedDown to a twisted pile.A futile attack, for still she standsBeaming her metallic smile.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Twas noontide of summer,And mid-time of night;And stars, in their orbits,Shone pale, thro' the lightOf the brighter, cold moon,'Mid planets her slaves,Herself in the Heavens,Her beam on the waves.I gazed awhileOn her cold smile;Too cold–too cold for me-There pass'd, as a shroud,A fleecy cloud,And I turned away to thee,Proud Evening Star,In thy glory afar,And dearer thy beam shall be;For joy to my heartIs the proud partThou bearest in Heaven at night,And more I admireThy distant fire,Than that colder, lowly light.

~ Edgar Allan Poe