Ryan > Ryan's Quotes

“Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.”
― Thales

“Everything is overflowing with Gods.”
― Proclus

“I grew up in the arms of the gods.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin

“Could beauty be caught and hurt
they had done her to death with their sneers
in ages and ages past,
could beauty be sacrificed
for a thrust of a sword,
for a piece of thin money
tossed up to fall half alloy—
then beauty were dead
long, long before we saw her face.”
― H.D., Collected Poems, 1912-1944

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
― John Keats, The Complete Poems

“To be a heretic to-day is almost a human obligation.”
― Jane Ellen Harrison

“Nothing, however, can be more arrogant, though nothing is commoner than to assume that of Gods there is only one, and of religions none but the speaker’s.”
― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“There are no norms. All people are exceptions to a rule that doesn’t exist.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.”
― Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red

“The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
Troubles my sleep (Cantico del Sole)”
― Ezra Pound, Selected Poems of Ezra Pound

“If there’s life on other planets, then the earth is the Universe’s insane asylum.”
― Voltaire

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
Into a thousand parts divide on man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;
For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there; jumping o'er times,
Turning the accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass: for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like your humble patience pray,
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Much Madness Is Divinest Sense

Much Madness is divinest Sense —
To a discerning Eye —
Much Sense — the starkest Madness —
'Tis the Majority
In this, as All, prevail —
Assent — and you are sane —
Demur — you're straightway dangerous —
And handled with a Chain —”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Resist much, obey little.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
― Walt Whitman

“Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
― Walt Whitman

“O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless—of cities fill’d with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light—of the objects mean—of the struggle ever renew’d;
Of the poor results of all—of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest—with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
― Socrates

“It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”
― Gertrude Stein

“We are voyagers, discoverers
of the not-known,
the unrecorded;
we have no map;
possibly we will reach haven,
heaven.”
― H.D., Trilogy: The Walls Do Not Fall / Tribute to the Angels / The Flowering of the Rod

“I change myself, I change the world.”
― Gloria Anzaldua

“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”
― Toni Morrison

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
― Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts

“There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity”
― Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems

“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.”
― Joseph Campbell

“There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.”
― Willa Cather, O Pioneers!

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere's Fan

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
― Oscar Wilde