Poetry Train > Poetry's Quotes

“In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.”
― Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

“To me, poetry is about survival first of all. Survival of the individual self, survival of the emotional life.”
― Gregory Orr

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.”
― Virginia Woolf

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“No one wants to read poetry. You have to make it impossible for them to put the poem down--impossible for them to stop reading it, word after word. You have to keep them from closing the book.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“The fear of poetry is an indication that we are cut off from our own reality.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.”
― Henry Ford

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“only someone who is ready for everything, who doesn't exclude any experience, even the most incomprehensible, will live the relationship with another person as something alive and will himself sound the depths of his own being.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“We are asleep with compasses in our hands. ”
― W.S. Merwin

“I am not who you think I am; I am not who I think I am; I am who I think you think I am ”
― Cooley, Inscriptions

“If the infinite had not desired man to be wise, he would not have bestowed upon him the faculty of knowing.”
― Manly P. Hall

“Woman is not made to be the admiration of all, but the happiness of one.”
― Edmund Burke

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke

“Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.”
― Edmund Burke

“Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.”
― Edmund Burke

“If a man is only as good as his word,
then I want to marry a man with a vocabulary like yours.
The way you say dicey and delectable and octogenarian
in the same sentence — that really turns me on.
The way you describe the oranges in your backyard
using anarchistic and intimate in the same breath.

I would follow the legato and staccato of your tongue
wrapping around your diction
until listening become more like dreaming
and dreaming became more like kissing you.

I want to jump off the cliff of your voice
into the suicide of your stream of consciousness.
I want to visit the place in your heart where the wrong words die.
I want to map it out with a dictionary and points
of brilliant light until it looks more like a star chart
than a strategy for communication.
I want to see where your words are born.
I want to find a pattern in the astrology.

I want to memorize the scripts of your seductions.
I want to live in the long-winded epics of your disappointments,
in the haiku of your epiphanies.
I want to know all the names you’ve given your desires.
I want to find my name among them,

‘cause there is nothing more wrecking sexy than the right word.
I want to thank whoever told you
there was no such thing as a synonym.
I want to throw a party for the heartbreak
that turned you into a poet.

And if it is true that a man is only as good as his word
then, sweet jesus, let me be there
the first time you are speechless,
and all your explosive wisdom becomes
a burning ball of sun in your throat,
and all you can bring yourself to utter is, oh god, oh god.”
― Mindy Nettifee

“-We need more love, to supersede hatred, -We need more strength,
to resist our weaknesses,
-We need more inspiration,
to lighten up our innermind.
-We need more learning,
to erase our ignorance,
-We need more wisdom,
to live longer and happier,
-We need more truths, to suppress deceptions,
-We need more health,
to enjoy our wealth,
-We need more peace, to stay in harmony with our brethren
-We need more smiles,
to brighten up our day,
-We need more hero's, and not zero's,
-We need more change of ourselves, to change the lives of others,
-We need more understanding,
to tackle our misunderstanding,
-We need more sympathy,
not apathy,
-We need more forgiveness,
not vengeance,
-We need more humility to be lifted up,
-We need more patience and not undue eagerness,
-We need more focus, to avoid distraction,
-We need more optimism,
not pessimism
-We need more justice,
not injustice,
-We need more facts, not fiction,
-We need more education,
to curb illiteracy,
-We need more skills, not incompetence,
-We need more challenges,
to make attempts,
-We need more talents,
to create the extraordinary,
-We need more helping hands,
not stingy folks,
-We need more efforts,
not laziness,
-We need more jokes, to forget our worries, -We need more spirituality,
not mean religion,
-We need more freedom,
not enslavement,
-We need more peacemakers,
not revolutionaries...with these, we create an heaven on earth.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

“Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much.”
― Orson Welles

“Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid ... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.”
― Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight

“We shall have all eternity in which to celebrate our victories, but we have only one swift hour before the sunset in which to win them.”
― Robert Moffat

“If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.”
― Russell Kirk