Quotes by Women Poets

Emily Dickinson

Anna Akhmatova

Nadine Gordimer

Margaret Atwood

Wisława Szymborska

Marina Tsvetaeva

Gertrude Stein

When all is said and done, monotony may after all be the best condition for creation.

Lady Margaret Sackville

My desk, most loyal friend
thank you. You've been with me on
every road I've taken.
My scar and my protection.

Marina Tsvetaeva

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is stoned to death.

I tasted - careless - then -
I did not know the Wine
Came once a World - Did you?
Oh, had you told me so -
This Thirst would blister - easier - now

Emily Dickinson

Five minutes! Zounds! I have been five minutes too late all my life-time!

Columbine, open your folded wrapper, Where two twin turtle-doves dwell! O cuckoopint toll me the purple clapper That hangs in your clear green bell!

the Revolution aint dead
its tired,
and jest resting.

Carolyn Rodgers

Only of one thing I am sure:
when I dream
I am always ageless.

Elizabeth Coatsworth

The walks put on their summer liveries,
And all things else did hold like similes:
The trees with leaves, with fruits, with flowers clad,
Embrac'd each other, seeming to be glad.

The way things work
is that eventually
something catches.

If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides it.
The doctors should fear arrogance
more than cardiac arrest.

I saw the radiant Queen of Night
Walking in brightness through the sky...

Charlotte Elliott

I keep my clocks a little fast / so time won't take me by surprise.

That which we look on with unselfish love
And true humility is surely ours,
Even as a lake looks at the stars above
And makes within itself a heaven of stars.

Mary Gardiner Brainard

Thou tyrant whom I will not name,
Whom heaven and hell alike disclaim;
Abhorred and shunned, for different ends,
By angels, Jesuits, beasts and fiends!...
That wretch, if such a wretch there be,
Who hopes for happiness from thee,
May search successfully as well
For truth in whores and ease in hell.

Mehetabel Wesley Wright

How sad they are, the promises we never return to. They stay in our mouths, roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.

Jane Hirshfield

Darlings of the forest! Blossoming alone When Earth's grief is sorest For her jewels gone - Ere the last snow-drift melts, your tender buds have blown.

Rose Terry Cooke

The north! the north! from out the north What founts of light are breaking forth, And streaming up these evening skies, A glorious wonder to our eyes!

Hannah Flagg Gould

Only yield when you must, never "give up the ship," but fight on to the last "with a stiff upper lip!

Secretly, we wish anyone we love will think exactly the way we do.

Now that Fate
Has brought me what so long, I so desired,
It is too late,
I am too tired.

If you will tell me why the fen appears impassable, I then will tell you why I think that I can cross it if I try.

If I can't have love, if I can't find peace, / Give me a bitter glory.

Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm.

You know, they say that there is a part
of the human chest that it you strike it hard enough,
it makes the person's heart explode. This sounds like
such a lie that I have to believe it's the truth. If I were
science, I'd never tell anyone where this place is.
If I were science, I'd have named this place after you.

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz