Robinson Jeffers Quotes

90 Sourced Quotes

Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.

Robinson Jeffers
I strain the mind to imagine distances That are not in man's mind...

Robinson Jeffers
Corruption never has been compulsory; when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

Robinson Jeffers
It was like the glittering night last October When the earth swam through a comet's tail, and fiery serpents Filled half of heaven.

Robinson Jeffers
You ask what I am for and what I am against in Spain. I would give my right hand of course to prevent the agony; I would not give a flick of my little finger to help either side win.

Robinson Jeffers
Poetry is bound to concern itself chiefly with permanent aspects of life.

Robinson Jeffers
Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

Robinson Jeffers
It will contract, the immense navies of stars and galaxies, Dust-clouds and nebulae Are recalled home, they crush against each other in one harbor, they stick in one lump.

Robinson Jeffers
Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol.

Robinson Jeffers
The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses —
How beautiful when we first beheld it,
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing...

Robinson Jeffers
That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you.

Robinson Jeffers
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots
to make earth.

Robinson Jeffers
There is no way to express that explosion; all that exists Roars into flame, the tortured fragments rush away from each other into all the sky, new universes Jewel the black breast of night; and far off the outer nebulae like charging spearmen again Invade emptiness. No wonder we are so fascinated with fire-works.

Robinson Jeffers
It is only a little planet But how beautiful it is.

Robinson Jeffers
I have grown to believe A stone is a better pillow than many visions.

Robinson Jeffers
And you, America, that passion made you. You were not born to
prosperity, you were born to love freedom.
You did not say "en masse," you said "independence." But we
cannot have all the luxuries and freedom also.

Robinson Jeffers
Galaxy on galaxy, innumerable swirls of innumerable stars, endured as it were forever and humanity Came into being, its two or three million years are a moment, in a moment it will certainly cease out from being.

Robinson Jeffers
Well: the day is a poem but too much Like one of Jeffers's, crusted with blood and barbaric omens, Painful to excess, inhuman as a hawk's cry.

Robinson Jeffers
I seem to have stood a long time and watched the stars pass. They also shall perish I believe. Here to-day, gone to-morrow, desperate wee galaxies Scattering themselves and shining their substance away Like a passionate thought. It is very well ordered.

Robinson Jeffers
Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred
stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this
thing comes near us again I am finding it hard
To praise you with a whole heart.

Robinson Jeffers
He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.

Robinson Jeffers
They take horses And give them sicknesses through hollow needles, their blood saves babies: I am here on the mountain making Antitoxin for all the happy towns and farms...

Robinson Jeffers
God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars-- If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond them Were that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears.

Robinson Jeffers
Thinking about the scrap of Mendelian theory Picked up in high-school: blue eyes recessive, brown dominant: Therefore blue-eyed parents cannot produce A dark-eyed child, the dark-eyed-producing element Is lacking in them. If it were present in either, That one would be dark-eyed, for dark eyes are dominant. In Tim Hunt (ed.)

Robinson Jeffers
The leonine adrenal glands poured their blind fury Into his blood.

Robinson Jeffers