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.

Since the journey is a metaphor - the most ambiguous and seductive of metaphors, we tell ourselves - it can also be born of immobility. There is no need to drag our bodies around so much, all dressed up. It's hot, there are flies, diseases. It is enough to close our eyes, seated on a chair in the shade, to float on the waves of imagination. Isn't that what books are there for?

Oh, a wondrous bird is the pelican!
His beak holds more than his belican.
He takes in his beak
Enough food for a week.
But I'll be darned if I know how the helican.

Dixon Lanier Merritt

He gets at the substance of a book directly; he tears out the heart of it.

Of Samuel Johnson

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

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

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.

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

Kamau Brathwaite

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

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

George Moses Horton

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

It goes without saying that a fine short poem can have the resonance and depth of an entire novel.

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 I could enchain him with a smile:
And lead him captive with a gentle word,
I scorn my look should ever man beguile,
Or other speech, than meaning to afford.

Elizabeth Tanfield Cary

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

It's true, the grave is more powerful than a lover's eyes. An open grave, with all its magnets. And I say this to you, you who when you smile make me think of the beginning of the world.

Vicente Huidobro

Those two wholesome defects of the French people, malice and curiosity, both of which are essential to its greatness.