Poet Quotes

The last cobwebs
of fog in the
black firtrees are flakes
of white ash in the world's hearth.

Denise Levertov

Art is interested in life at the moment when the ray of power is passing through it.

Boris Pasternak

The more uniform a man's voice, step, manner of conversation, handwriting--the more quiet, uniform, settled, his actions, his character.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

And look upon you with ten thousand eyes
Till heaven wax'd blind, and till the world were done.

Joshua Sylvester

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.

Robert Southwell

'Qui procul hinc', the legend's writ,—
The frontier-grave is far away—
'Qui ante diem periit:
Sed miles, sed pro patria.'

The sweetest pleasures soonest cloy, And its best flavour temperance gives to joy.

I saw God! Do you doubt it?
Do you dare to doubt it?
I saw the Almighty Man! His hand
Was resting on a mountain!

James Kenneth Stephen

When liberty, this austere goddess,
Comes down to console people on earth;
That she finds them seated, in their heavy troubles,
On a ground cracked a thousand and four hundred years ago,
Her work which everywhere encounters a rebellious ground
Is very laborious before emerging beautiful

Auguste-Marseille Barthélemy

Near to Bootes the bright Crown is view'd And shines with stars of different magnitude: Or placed in front above the rest displays A vigorous light, and dwarfs surprising rays. This shone, since Theseus first his faith betray'd, The monument of the forsaken maid.

Marcus Manilius

This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attentiveness.

Whoever interrupts the conversation of others to make a display of his own fund of knowledge, makes notorious his own stock of ignorance.

Goodbye,
you who are, for me, the postmarks again
of shattered towns--Xenia, Burnt Cabins,
Hornell--
their loneliness
given away in poems, only their solitude kept.

I do not write for the public. You are my public and I hope to convert you.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

When the voice of Christ speaks through the Word, then you will arise, and leave all, and follow Him.

Robert Murray M'Cheyne

It has the original mouth but remains wordless;
It is surrounded by a magnificent mound of hair.
Sentient beings can get completely lost in it
But it is also the birthplace of all the Buddhas of the ten thousand worlds.

Yet this is the watch by night.
Let us all accept new strength, and
real tenderness. And at dawn, armed
with glowing patience, we will enter
the cities of glory.

And o'er them the lighthouse looked lovely as hope,—
That star of life's tremulous ocean.

Paul Moon James

There are fools who seek to understand the secrets of nature.

And also there's a little star
So white a virgin's it must be:—
Perhaps the lamp my love in heaven
Hangs out to light the way for me.

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
And some are treasured for their markings –
They cause the eyes to melt
Or the body to shriek without pain.

Whoever he was who first depicted Amor as a boy, don't you think it was a wonderful touch? He was the first to see that lovers live without sense.

Poetry is a collaborative art, and yet—as it is being created—the most solitary and 'individual' of activities.

Michael Schmidt

The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear, And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.

Christina Rossetti

The children eat and wriggle and laugh,
The two old ladies stroke their silk;
But the cat is grown small and thin with desire,
Transformed to a creeping lust for milk.