Jen > Jen's Quotes

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
― Mae West

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well.”
― Mark Twain

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.”
― Woody Allen

“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
― Henry Ward Beecherr

“The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost

“We love the things we love for what they are.”
― Robert Frost

“If you are a dreamer come in
If you are a dreamer a wisher a liar
A hoper a pray-er a magic-bean-buyer
If youre a pretender com sit by my fire
For we have some flax golden tales to spin
Come in!
Come in!”
― Shel Silverstein

“To be nobody but
yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
― E.E. Cummings

“Poetry is what gets lost in translation.”
― Robert Frost

“Unbeing dead isn't being alive.”
― E. E. Cummings

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
― Mary Oliver

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”
― Charles Baudelaire

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.”
― T.S. Eliot

“Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems

“Listen--are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?”
― Mary Oliver

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas

“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”
― Edgar Allan Poe

“You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning is only clear thorough the search.”
― Rick Riordan

“why can't you see i'm a kid', said the kid.
Why try to make me like you?
Why are you hurt when I don't cuddle?
Why do you sigh when I splash through a puddle?
Why do you scream when I do what I did?
Im a kid.”
― Shel Silverstein, Falling Up

“To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”
― Robert Frost

“Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.”
― Novalis

“A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.”
― Yevgeny Yevtushenko

“There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.”
― Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems

“I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops.”
― Nikki Giovanni

“There is no greater sorrow
Than to recall a happy time
When miserable.”
― Dante Alighieri

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott