Poet Quotes

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.

Not for no cold did freeze,
Nor any cloud beguile
Th'eternal flowering spring

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

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

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

You think you got something big to say? Something momentous? Or is it what you had to memorize in order to escape the men with lightning in their eyes?

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.

Yellow melon flowers Crawl beneath the withered peach-trees; A date-palm throws its heavy fronds of steel Against the scoured metallic sky.

John Gould Fletcher

Let the person who wins be him who says what is most desirable for the city.

The fool that eats till he is sick must fast till he is well.

George Walter Thornbury

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.

Languages are not owned
by nations but by the people who use them
and make them live.

Abdourahman Waberi

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.

The terrible newly imported American doctrine that everyone ought to do something.

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

Is it not easy to conceive the World in your Mind? To think the Heavens fair? The Sun Glorious? The Earth fruitful? The Air Pleasant? The Sea Profitable? And the Giver bountiful? Yet these are the things which it is difficult to retain. For could we always be sensible of their use and value, we should be always delighted with their wealth and glory.

Thomas Traherne

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

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

Joshua Sylvester

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

Boris Pasternak

Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout;
But there is no joy in Mudville — mighty Casey has "struck out."

But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

I, a Laconian dog, can bite again: Yes, I can make the Daunian tiger flee, Much more a bragging, foul-mouth'd whelp like thee.

Henry Kirke White

Take, O boatman, thrice thy fee,—
Take, I give it willingly;
For, invisible to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me.