Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Conrad Aiken
Conrad Aiken Quotes
75 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Separate we come, and separate we go, And this be it known, is all that we know.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread;
Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
'One white rose... or is it pink, today?'
They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
I ascend from darkness
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where;
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
The poet walked alone in a cold late rain,
And thought his grief was like the crying of sea-birds;
For his lover was dead, he never would love again.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
'I am the one who stood beside you and smiled,
Thinking your face so strangely young... '
'I am the one who loved you but did not dare.'
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads,
Hear sounds far off,—and dream, with quivering breath,
Our curious separate ways through life and death.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.
They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
More towers must yet be built—more towers destroyed—
Great rocks hoisted in air;
And he must seek his bread in high pale sunlight
With gulls about him, and clouds just over his eyes...
And so he did not mention his dream of falling
But drank his coffee in silence, and heard in his ears
That horrible whistle of wind, and felt his breath
Sucked out of him, and saw the tower flash by
And the small tree swell beneath him...
He patted his boy on the head, and kissed his wife,
Looked quickly around the room, to remember it,—
And so went out... For once, he forgot his pail.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Death is never an ending, death is a change; Death is beautiful, for death is strange; Death is one dream out of another flowing.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,
Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;
And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death
As she blew out her light.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass,
Through many doors to the one door of all.
Soon as it's opened we shall hear a music:
Or see a skeleton fall...
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I!
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple,
Two lovers blow together like music blowing:
And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea.
Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them,
They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
In one room, silently, lover looks upon lover,
And thinks the air is fire.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Should I not hear, as I lie down in dust,
The horns of glory blowing above my burial?
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music,
We press upon them, we hold them, and let them pass;
A chord of music strikes us and straight we tremble;
We tremble like wind-blown grass.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
'I bound her to me in all soft ways,
I bound her to me in a net of days,
Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.
How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?
There is no use: we cry: and are not heard.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
Over the darkened city, the city of towers,
The city of a thousand gates,
Over the gleaming terraced roofs, the huddled towers,
Over a somnolent whisper of loves and hates,
The slow wind flows, drearily streams and falls,
With a mournful sound down rain-dark walls.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It's simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
In the mazes of loitering people, the watchful and furtive,
The shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves,
In the drowse of the sunlight, among the low voices,
I suddenly face you
Conrad Aiken
Source
Report...
The hiss was now becoming a roar—the whole world was a vast moving screen of snow—but even now it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep.
Conrad Aiken
1
2
3
Quote of the day
I know at last what distinguishes man from animals; financial worries.
Romain Rolland
Conrad Aiken
Creative Commons
Born:
August 5, 1889
Died:
August 17, 1973
(aged 84)
Bio:
Conrad Potter Aiken was an American writer, whose work includes poetry, short stories, novels, a play, and an autobiography.
Known for:
Silent Snow, Secret Snow
The house of dust (1920)
Blue Voyage (1927)
A heart for the gods of Mexico (1939)
King Coffin (1935)
Most used words:
dream
,
music
,
death
,
walls
,
face
,
towers
,
light
,
walk
,
street
,
secret
,
rain
,
hands
,
wind
,
eyes
,
strange
Conrad Aiken on Wikipedia
Conrad Aiken works on Gutenberg Project
Conrad Aiken works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Conrad Aiken Quotes
Conrad Aiken Short Quotes
American Novelist Quotes
Novelist Quotes
19th-century Novelist Quotes
Related People
T. S. Eliot
English Author
Malcolm Lowry
British Poet
William Rose Benét
American Author
Family
Joan Aiken
Daughter
Jane Aiken Hodge
Daughter
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes