Poet Quotes

I am really very, very tired of everything - more than tired.

Till our King Henry had shook hands with Death.

You make 'em, I amuse 'em.

The truth is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to go to work to find it.

There is one mind common to all individual men

...the only psychologist from whom I have anything to learn.

Of all crimes the worstIs to steal the gloryFrom the great and brave,Even more accursedThan to rob the grave.

If Nature had been comfortable, mankind would never have invented architecture.

Life's uncertain voyage.

To make knowledge valuable, you must have the cheerfulness of wisdom.

If the house of the world is dark, Love will find a way to create windows.

My life is for itself and not for a spectacle.

How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold.

He who laughs best today, will also laughs last.

If I were invited to a dinner party with my characters, I wouldn't show up.

Man is but the place where I stand.

We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which came and went on the western sky, and the mother-o'-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there.

That is honor's scornWhich challenges itself as honor's bornAnd is not like the sire. Honors thriveWhen rather from our acts we them deriveThan our foregoers.

I am too easily contented with a slight and almost animal happiness. My happiness is a good deal like that of the woodchucks.

Do not be bullied out of your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant.

Sympathy with joy intensifies the sum of sympathy in the world, sympathy with pain does not really diminish the amount of pain.

Gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder, I gain'd my freedom.

The Germans are like women, you can scarcely ever fathom their depths - they haven't any.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day As after sunset fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. -Sonnet 73

The rose is a rose,And was always a rose.But the theory now goesThat the apple's a rose,And the pear is, and so'sThe plum, I suppose.The dear only knowsWhat will next prove a rose.You, of course, are a rose -But were always a rose.

The task is not to overcome opponents in general but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill and one's swordsmanship-in fact to master opponents who are one's equals.

We may stand, if only on one leg, or at least be left still upon our knees.

The land was ours before we were the land's. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

Zweck sein selbst ist jegliches Tier.Each animal is an end in itself.

Let America be America, where equality is in the air we breathe.

Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.

No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.

No one feels himself easy in a garden which does not look like the open country.

I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.

Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

Sow a seed and the earth will yield you a flower. Dream your dream to the sky and it will bring you your beloved.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

No man has ever lived that had enough of children's gratitude or woman's love.

It is far pleasanter to injure and afterwards beg forgiveness than to be injured and grant forgiveness. He who does the former gives evidence of power and afterwards of kindness of character.

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!What a taskto askof anything, or anyone,yet it is ours,and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest, and despair most fits.

What seems to sell books is good word-of-mouth, not promotion tours. I'm too old to believe that media promotion of a book really matters. What matters is how it will look 100 years from now, not how many copies are sold.

Did you ever hear of a man who had striven all his life faithfully and singly towards an object, and in no measure obtained it? If a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated? Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them,--that it was a vain endeavor?

I do not hesitate to read. all good books in translations. What is really best in any book is translatable-any real insight or broad human sentiment.

I wisely started with a map.

In large states public education will always be mediocre, for the same reason that in large kitchens the cooking is usually bad.

Who loses a day loses life.

Do anything, but let it produce joy.

It is contended that those who have been bred at Eton, Harrow, Rugby, and Westminster, that the public sentiment within each of those schools is high-toned and manly; that, in their playgrounds, courage is universally admired, meanness despised, manly feelings and generous conduct are encouraged: that an unwritten code of honor deals to the spoiled child of rank, and to the child of upstart wealth an even-handed justice, purges their nonsense out of both, and does all that can be done to make them gentlemen.

The surest sign that two people no longer speak the same language is that both say ironic things to one another but that neither senses the irony.

I have no help to send, therefore I must go myself.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself." ~ Goethe

There is no friend like an old friend who has shared our morning days, no greeting like his welcome, no homage like his praise.

Forsake all inhibitions, Pursue thy dreams.

Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof.

To be of use to the world is the only way to be happy.

It has been said that next to hunger and thirst, our most basic human need is for storytelling.

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.