Robinson Jeffers Quotes

90 Sourced Quotes

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

Robinson Jeffers
We know the stars, hotter and more fatal than earth; we have learned lately the fire-wheel galaxies, Infinite in number or all but infinite, among which our great sun's galaxy's Flight is as a gnat's, one grain of sand in the Sahara: it is necessary to stretch our minds To these dimensions.

Robinson Jeffers
It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and that there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God, rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions - the world of the spirits.

Robinson Jeffers
It is expanding, the farthest nebulae Rush with the speed of light into empty space.

Robinson Jeffers
He saw clearly in his mind the little Adrenal glands perched on the red-brown kidneys, As if all his doomed tissues became transparent, Pouring in these passions their violent secretion Into his blood-stream, raising the tension unbearably. And the thyroids: tension, tension.

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

Robinson Jeffers
Humanity is the start of the race; I say Humanity is the mould to break away from, the crust to break through, the coal to break into fire, The atom to be split.

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

Robinson Jeffers
Therefore astronomy is the most noble science: is the most useless.

Robinson Jeffers
The mathematicians and physics men Have their mythology; they work alongside the truth, Never touching it; their equations are false But the things work. Or, when gross error appears, They invent new ones; they drop the theory of waves In universal ether and imagine curved space.

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

Robinson Jeffers
They work alongside the truth Never touching it; their equations are false But the things work.

Robinson Jeffers
It seemed to Barclay the cloud broke and he saw the stars, Those of this swarm were many, but beyond them universe past universe Flared to infinity, no end conceivable. Alien, alien, alien universes.

Robinson Jeffers
Howard felt a sudden increase of force and life in his mind, like a transfusion Of strong red blood, he thought "The faithful adrenals Have just heard how near death I am."

Robinson Jeffers
We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustn't reach out our hands or we get them gashed.

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
Science is an adoration; a kind of worship.

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

Robinson Jeffers
Science is not to serve but to know. Science is for itself its own value, it is not for man.

Robinson Jeffers
Nor can the astronomer see his moon-dazzled Constellations: let him give one night in the month to earth and the moon, Women and games.

Robinson Jeffers
Or as mathematics, a human invention... parallels but never touches reality, gives the astronomer Metaphors through which he may comprehend The powers and the flow of things.

Robinson Jeffers
Truly men hate the truth; they'd liefer meet a tiger on the road.

Robinson Jeffers
The great one, the ancient torch, a lord among lost children, The earth's orbit doubled would not girdle his greatness, one fire Globed, out of grasp of the mind enormous; but to you O Night What? Not a spark?.

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
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
Meteors are not needed less than mountains:
shine, perishing republic.

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
Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.

Robinson Jeffers
Here is a symbol in which
Many high tragic thoughts
Watch their own eyes.

Robinson Jeffers