Poet Quotes

Imagine your shadow burning off the page / As the dear world and the dead word disengage

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

Abdourahman Waberi

Far as distress the soul can wound
'Tis pain in each degree;
Bliss goes but to a certain bound,
Beyond is agony.

Frances Greville

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

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

Oft as by chance, a little while apart The pall of empty, loveless hours withdrawn, Sweet Beauty, opening on the impoverished heart, Beams like a jewel on the breast of dawn.

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

Loaded with note cards for research papers that I was hopelessly behind on, I'd enter the Public Library only to end up wandering around lost, wasting the day.

Don Carlos was one of those peaceful and indolent men who do not know how to do evil, nor to go to great lengths to do good.

Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda

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.

Even so the Blood (bred of good nourishment) By divers Pipes to all the body sent, Turns here to Bones there changes into Nerves; Here is made Marrow, there for Muscles serves.

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas

A poem is a box, a thing, to put other things in. For safe keeping.

Marianne Boruch

The first men that our Saviour dear
Did choose to wait upon him here,
Blest fishers were; and fish the last
Food was, that he on earth did taste:
I therefore strive to follow those
Whom he to follow him hath chose.

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.

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

People who didn't live pre-Internet can't grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was.

Euryalus, is it
the gods who put this fire in our minds,
or is it that each man's relentless longing
becomes a god to him?

Allen Mandelbaum

So some unlucky Engineer Does all the fit Materials compound, That are in Art or Nature found; Will glorious Fire-Works prepare.

I'm saying that the domain of poetry includes both oral & written forms, that poetry goes back to a pre-literate situation & would survive a post-literate situation, that human speech is a near-endless source of poetic forms, that there has always been more oral than written poetry, & that we can no longer pretend to a knowledge of poetry if we deny its oral dimension.

Jerome Rothenberg

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

The past has flown away. The coming month and year do not exist. Ours only is the present's tiny point.

Mahmoud Shabestari

My mother only said: Thank God the scorpion picked on me and spared my children.

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

See the wasp. He has pretty yellow stripes around his body, and a darning needle in his tail. If you will pat the wasp upon the tail we will give you a nice picture book.

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

Claudia Rankine