Poet Quotes

I fear freedom. I, above all, fear the freedom that is above all feardom.

Giannina Braschi

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.

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

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Thou that swing'st upon the waving haire Of some well-filled Oaten Beard, Drunke ev'ry night with a Delicious teare, Dropt thee from Heav'n, where now th'art! The joys of Earth and Ayre are thine intire, That with thy feet and wings dost hop and flye; And when thy Poppy workes, thou dost retire To thy carv'd Acorn-bed to lye.

Richard Lovelace

Nowadays this is the way everyone loves himself; people wish to live with God in consolations and repose, in wealth and power, and to share the fruition of his glory. We all indeed wish to be God with God, but God knows there are few of us who want to live as men with his Humanity, or want to carry his cross with him, or want to hang on the cross with him and pay humanity's debt to the full.

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

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

Only one thing abides: an infinite beauty that passes from form to form, eternally changed and revealed afresh.

The writer who is a mother should, I think, record everything she can: make notes, keep journals, take photographs, use a tape recorder, and remind herself that there is a subject so incalculably vast significance to humanity, about which virtually nothing is known because writers have not been mothers.

Alicia Ostriker

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

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

Johann Kaspar Lavater

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

There is strength deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck but little till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent before her gems are found?

Or like a poet woo the Moon,
Riding an armchair for my steed,
And with a flashing pen harpoon
Terrific metaphors of speed.

You can't drive to the coastline. You can only drive so close to the white chalky cliff and then you have to get out and dive.

Joyelle McSweeney

There's nothing in the world (that is in Trinity) To make us poets happy; — I detest Your Hebrew, Greek and heathenish Latinity, And Mathematics are a bore at best.

John Moultrie (poet)

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

Michael Schmidt

Alas! Am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain?
Deprived of all created bliss,
Through hardship, toil and pain!

George Moses Horton

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.

The first few glasses of beer were a revelation; they flushed my veins with happiness; they washed away all cares and shyness and worries. I remember thinking to myself, If I could have two pints of beer every afternoon, life would be a great happiness.

George Mackay Brown

To this point is my mind reduced by your fault, Lesbia, and has so ruined itself by its own devotion, that now it can neither wish you well though you should become the best of women, nor cease to love you though you do the worst that can be done.

This wind you hear is the birth of memory
when the moment hatches in time's womb
there will be no art talk, the only poem
you will hear will be the spearpoint pivoted
in the punctured marrow of the villain; the
timeless native son dancing like crazy to
the retrieved rhythms of desire
fading
in-
to
memory.

Keorapetse Kgositsile

Letters, from absent friends, extinguish fear, Unite division, and draw distance near; Their magic force each silent wish conveys, And wafts embodied though, a thousand ways: Could souls to bodies write, death's pow'r were mean, For minds could then meet minds with heav'n between.

Memories are smoke
lips we can't kiss
hands we can't hold
will never be
enough for us.

Kamau Brathwaite

In principle, should the laborers have the produce of their labor? I do not hesitate to say: No! although I know that a multitude of workers will cry out. Look, proletarians, cry out, shout as much as you like, but then listen to me: No, it is not the product of their labors to which the workers have a right. It is the satisfaction of their needs, whatever the nature of those needs. To have the possession of the product of our labor is not to have possession of that which is proper to us, it is to have property in a product made by our hands, and which could be proper to others and not to us. And isn't all property theft?

Joseph Déjacque