Poet Quotes

The artesian well of joy never runs dry. We clog it with our thoughts.

Scrape the surface of language, and you will behold interstellar space and the skin that encloses it.

Velimir Khlebnikov

Louers be war and tak gude heid about Quhome that ye lufe, for quhome ye suffer paine. I lat yow wit, thair is richt few thairout Quhome ye may traist to haue trew lufe agane.

Robert Henryson

It is still news to her that passion could steer her wrong though she went down, a thousand times strung out across railroad tracks, off bridges under cars, or stiff glass bottle still in hand, hair soft on greasy pillows, still it is news she cannot follow love (his burning footsteps in blue crystal snow) & still come out all right.

Life let us cherish, while yet the taper glows,
And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close;
Why are we fond of toil and care?
Why choose the rankling thorn to wear?

Johann Martin Usteri

I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling,
I've felt all its favours and found its decay;
Sweet was its blessing, kind its caressing,
But now it is fled, fled far, far away.

Alison Cockburn

Love is a flaming heart, and its flames aspire / Till they cloud the soul in the smoke of a windy fire.

This is the sanctification of your studies: when they are devoted to God, and when He is the end, the object, and the life of them all.

Can we reasonably expect happiness from an insatiable appetite which, no matter how it stuffs its belly, is still psychologically like Oliver Twist in the poorhouse, holding up an empty bowl and begging, "I want some more"? Isn't it possible that our dream of the good society contained, from the beginning, a hidden violation of the Tenth Commandment "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods"?

As the Creator and Preserver of men, Thou art gloriously manifest; butO! how much more gloriously art Thou revealed as reconciling ungrateful enemies to Thyself by the blood of Thy eternal Son. Here Thy beneficence displays its brightest splendor; here Thou dost fully display Thy most magnificent titles; THE LORD, THE LORD GOD, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness. How unsearchable are Thy ways, and Thy paths past finding out!

Harvest, oh! harvest your hour While life is abloom with youth! For age with bitter ruth Will fade your beauty's flower.

Pierre de Ronsard

I shall not say why and how I became, at the age of fifteen, the mistress of the Earl of Craven.

Harriette Wilson

I pledge allegiance to the soil
of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell
one ecosystem
in diversity
under the sun
With joyful interpenetratio n for all.

For though the day be never so long,
At last the bells ringeth to evensong.

I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze,
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease!

Georgia Douglas Johnson

Didn't I seize the fire of ideas and make them leap, tear, fly, sing

If — struggling and trouble-stricken —
I still try to do something and work
— as well as possible —
then it is in order that anybody shall be allowed
to do his work in freedom,
that he shall not be harmed, or suffer violence,
nor false charges be brought against him,
in order that
this little Hungary
shall one day become a real Homeland,
the country of its nation.

Benjámin László

Great minds against themselves conspire, and shun the cure they most desire.

If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.

Penelope Fitzgerald

Now that I know that each star has its path, each bird is finally feathered and grown in the unbroken shell, each tree in the seed, each song in the life laid down - is the night sky any less strange; should my glance less follow the flight; should the pen shake less in my hand.

He 'midst the graceful of superior grace,
And she the loveliest of the loveliest race.

A friendship that can be ended / didn't ever start

Mellin de Saint-Gelais

When I had curls
I knew more girls.
I do more reading
Now my hair is receding.

James Simmons (poet)

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 West for me means ambition, the East contentment. My heart is ever in one, my soul in the other.