Poet Quotes

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.

The challenge is always to find the ultimate in the ordinary horseshit.

James Tate (writer)

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

Kamau Brathwaite

It is easier, of course, to find dignity in one's solitude. Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?-No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink-Here you are again, it says, and so am I.

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

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

Abdourahman Waberi

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

One shouldn't be too inquisitive in life Either about God's secrets or one's wife.

Geoffrey Chaucer

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

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

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?

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.

If I told you about a land of love...would you swallow it as a remedy?

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

Denise Levertov

Ha! see where the wild-blazing Grog-shop appears,
As the red waves of wretchedness swell;
How it burns on the edge of tempestuous years—
The horrible Light-house of Hell!

McDonald Clarke

To rid the grass of weed, to get
The whole root,
Thick, tangled, takes a strong mind

And desire - to make clean, make pure.
The weed, tough
As the rock it leaps against,

Unless plucked to the last
Live fiber
Will plunge up through dark again.

The weed also has the desire
To make clean,
Make pure, there against the rock.

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

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

George Moses Horton

Threadbare his songs seem now, to lettered ken: They were worn threadbare next the hearts of men.

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is.

The doctor looked wise: — "A slow fever," he said: Prescribed sudorifics, — and going to bed. "Sudorifics in bed," exclaim'd Will, "are humbugs! I've enough of them there, without paying for drugs!"

George Colman the Younger

I know you—a glance, and what you are
Sits-by-the-fire in my heart.
My Limousine-Lady knows you, or
Why does the slant-envy of her eye mark
Your straight air and radiant inclusive smile?
Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adoring.

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

Don't bring the ocean if I feel thirsty, nor heaven if I ask for a light; but bring a hint, some dew, a particle, as birds carry only drops away from water, and the wind a grain of salt.

You should speak out because if you don't, it's going to harm you.

Claudia Rankine