c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
The days aren't discarded or collected, they are beesthat burned with sweetness or maddenedthe sting: the struggle continues,the journeys go and come between honey and pain.No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,or action, or silence, or honor:life is like a stone, a single motion,a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metalthat climbs or descends burning in your bones.
— Pablo Neruda, Still Another Day
Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.
— Walt Whitman, Complete Prose Works
We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.This is but half the truth.You are also as strong as your strongest link.To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the oceanby the frailty of its foam.To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.
— Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
We ran as if to meet the moon.
— Robert Frost
Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
One need not be a chamber to be haunted.
— Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
I Am VerticalBut I would rather be horizontal.I am not a tree with my root in the soilSucking up minerals and motherly loveSo that each March I may gleam into leaf,Nor am I the beauty of a garden bedAttracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,Unknowing I must soon unpetal.Compared with me, a tree is immortalAnd a flower-head not tall, but more startling,And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.Sometimes I think that when I am sleepingI must most perfectly resemble them--Thoughts gone dim.It is more natural to me, lying down.Then the sky and I are in open conversation,And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me."I Am Vertical", 28 March 1961
— Sylvia Plath, The Collected Poems
You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
— Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.
— George Eliot, Middlemarch
It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.
— Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women
My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool
—  it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.
Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.
— Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook
If we surrenderedto earth's intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Lovers find secret placesinside this violent worldwhere they make transactions with beauty.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.
— Jim Morrison
I am not a Sunday morning inside four wallswith clean bloodand organized drawers.I am the hurricane setting fire to the forestsat night when no one else is aliveor awakehowever you choose to see itand I live in my own flamessometimes burning too bright and too wildto make things lastor handlemyself or anyone elseand so I run.run run runfar and wideuntil my bones ache and lungs splitand it feels good.Hear that people? It feels goodbecause I am the slave and ruler of my own bodyand I wish to do with it exactly as I please
— Charlotte Eriksson
Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.
— Andrew Motion
Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.
— W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
It is always what I have already said: always the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
I live not in dreams but in contemplation of a reality that is perhaps the future.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
in a worldfull oftemporary thingsyou area perpetual feeling.
— Sanober  Khan
Looks like what drives me crazyDon't have no effect on you--But I'm gonna keep on at itTill it drives you crazy, too.
— Langston Hughes, Selected Poems
For darkness restores what light cannot repair.
— Joseph Brodsky
What though the radiance which was once so brightBe now for ever taken from my sight,Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be;In the soothing thoughts that springOut of human suffering;In the faith that looks through death,In years that bring the philosophic mind.
— William Wordsworth
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.
— T.S. Eliot
Every angel is terrifying.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
I opened a book and in I strode.Now nobody can find me.I've left my chair, my house, my road,My town and my world behind me.I'm wearing the cloak, I've slipped on the ring,I've swallowed the magic potion.I've fought with a dragon, dined with a kingAnd dived in a bottomless ocean.I opened a book and made some friends.I shared their tears and laughterAnd followed their road with its bumps and bendsTo the happily ever after.I finished my book and out I came.The cloak can no longer hide me.My chair and my house are just the same,But I have a book inside me.
— Julia Donaldson
From childhood's hour I have not beenAs others were; I have not seenAs others saw; I could not bringMy passions from a common spring.From the same source I have not takenMy sorrow; I could not awakenMy heart to joy at the same tone;And all I loved, I loved alone.Then- in my childhood, in the dawnOf a most stormy life- was drawnFrom every depth of good and illThe mystery which binds me still:From the torrent, or the fountain,From the red cliff of the mountain,From the sun that round me rolledIn its autumn tint of gold,From the lightning in the skyAs it passed me flying by,From the thunder and the storm,And the cloud that took the form(When the rest of Heaven was blue)Of a demon in my view.
— Edgar Allan Poe, Alone
He that is thy friend indeed,He will help thee in thy need:If thou sorrow, he will weep;If thou wake, he cannot sleep:Thus of every grief in heartHe with thee doth bear a part.These are certain signs to knowFaithful friend from flattering foe.
— William Shakespeare, The Passionate Pilgrim
The way a crowShook down on meThe dust of snowFrom a hemlock treeHas given my heartA change of moodAnd saved some partOf a day I had rued.
— Robert Frost
You had this expression on your face, like you weren’t quite sure you were supposed to be on Earth.
— pleasefindthis, I Wrote This For You
I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy."Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what isstrong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.
— Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
So sweet and delicious do I become,when I am in bed with a manwho, I sense, loves and enjoys me,that the pleasure I bring excels all delight,so the knot of love, however tightit seemed before, is tied tighter still.
— Veronica Franco, Poems and Selected Letters
A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.
— Salman Rushdie
Green was the silence, wet was the light,the month of June trembled like a butterfly.
— Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
i found god in myselfand i loved heri loved her fiercely
— Ntozake Shange
My mouth is a fire escape.The words coming outdon’t care that they are naked.There is something burning in there.
— Andrea Gibson, The Madness Vase: By Andrea Gibson
You darkness, that I come from,I love you more than all the firesthat fence in the world,for the fire makesa circle of light for everyone,and then no one outside learns of you.But the darkness pulls in everything:shapes and fires, animals and myself,how easily it gathers them! -powers and people -and it is possible a great energyis moving near me.I have faith in nights.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
since the thing perhaps isto eat flowers and not to be afraid
— E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems, 1904-1962
Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.
— William Blake
when man determined to destroy himself he picked the was of shall and finding only why smashed it into because
— E.E. Cummings, 100 Selected Poems
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.
— Truman Capote, Truman Capote: Conversations
the saddest thing is to bea minute to someone,when you've made them your eternity.
— Sanober  Khan
Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth -whether it existed before or not
— John Keats
After the first glass of vodkayou can accept just about anythingof life even your own mysteriousnessyou think it is nice that a boxof matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Swedenfor they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there?
— Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
My battered heart will always be where the ocean meets the sand, I will break over and overEvery day. That is the best andworst part of me.
— Clementine von Radics
Voodoo GirlHer skin is white cloth,and she's all sewn apartand she has many colored pinssticking out of her heart.She has many different zombieswho are deeply in her trance.She even has a zombiewho was originally from France.But she knows she has a curse on her,a curse she cannot win.For if someone getstoo close to her,the pins stick farther in.
— Tim Burton
Nobody wanted your dance,Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your flounderingDrowning life and your effort to save yourself,Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,Looking for something to give.
— Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters
The TypeEveryone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else. -Richard SikenIf you grow up the type of woman men want to look at,you can let them look at you. But do not mistake eyes for hands.Or windows.Or mirrors.Let them see what a woman looks like.They may not have ever seen one before.If you grow up the type of woman men want to touch,you can let them touch you.Sometimes it is not you they are reaching for.Sometimes it is a bottle. A door. A sandwich. A Pulitzer. Another woman.But their hands found you first. Do not mistake yourself for a guardian.Or a muse. Or a promise. Or a victim. Or a snack.You are a woman. Skin and bones. Veins and nerves. Hair and sweat.You are not made of metaphors. Not apologies. Not excuses.If you grow up the type of woman men want to hold,you can let them hold you.All day they practice keeping their bodies upright--even after all this evolving, it still feels unnatural, still strains the muscles,holds firm the arms and spine. Only some men will want to learnwhat it feels like to curl themselves into a question mark around you,admit they do not have the answersthey thought they would have by now;some men will want to hold you like The Answer.You are not The Answer.You are not the problem. You are not the poemor the punchline or the riddle or the joke.Woman. If you grow up the type men want to love,You can let them love you.Being loved is not the same thing as loving.When you fall in love, it is discovering the oceanafter years of puddle jumping. It is realizing you have hands.It is reaching for the tightrope when the crowds have all gone home.Do not spend time wondering if you are the type of womanmen will hurt. If he leaves you with a car alarm heart, you learn to sing along.It is hard to stop loving the ocean. Even after it has left you gasping, salty.Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still callmistakes when you tuck them in at night. And know this:Know you are the type of woman who is searching for a place to call yours.Let the statues crumble.You have always been the place.You are a woman who can build it yourself.You were born to build.
— Sarah Kay
sweet spring is yourtime is my time is ourtime for springtime is lovetimeand viva sweet love(all the merry little birds areflying in the floating in thevery spirits singing inare winging in the blossoming)lovers go and lovers comeawandering awonderingbut any two are perfectlyalone there's nobody else alive(such a sky and such a suni never knew and neither did youand everybody never breathedquite so many kinds of yes)not a tree can count his leaveseach herself by openingbut shining who by thousands meanonly one amazing thing(secretly adoring shylytiny winging darting floatingmerry in the blossomingalways joyful selves are singing)sweet spring is yourtime is my time is ourtime for springtime is lovetimeand viva sweet love
— E.E. Cummings
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
— Omar Khayyám
Water, water, everywhere,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
We sit and talk,quietly, with long lapses of silenceand I am aware of the streamthat has no language, coursingbeneath the quiet heaven ofyour eyeswhich has no speech
— William Carlos Williams, Paterson
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
— Randall Jarrell
Speak against unconscious oppression,Speak against the tyranny of the unimaginative,Speak against bonds.
— Ezra Pound
Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.
— T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
I want to see thirstIn the syllables,Tough fireIn the sound;Feel through the darkFor the scream.
— Pablo Neruda
Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
— Richard Siken, Crush
I bring you with reverent handsThe books of my numberless dreams.
— W.B. Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds
first of all nothing will happen and a little laternothing will happen again
— Leonard Cohen, Book of Longing
I do not know which to prefer,The beauty of inflectionsOr the beauty of innuendosThe blackbird whistlingOr just after.
— Wallace Stevens
Maka pada suatu pagi hari ia ingin sekali menangis sambil berjalan tunduk sepanjang lorong itu. Ia ingin pagi itu hujan turun rintik-rintik dan lorong sepi agar ia bisa berjalan sendiri saja sambil menangis dan tak ada orang bertanya kenapa.Ia tidak ingin menjerit-jerit berteriak-teriak mengamuk memecahkan cermin membakar tempat tidur. Ia hanya ingin menangis lirih saja sambil berjalan sendiri dalam hujan rintik-rintik di lorong sepi pada suatu pagi.
— Sapardi Djoko Damono
Never cry because you have mountains of problem in your hands to solve. Always smile because each problems will someday resolve.
— Santosh Kalwar
when I am feelinglowall i have to do iswatch my catsand mycouragereturns
— Charles Bukowski
Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
— Anne Sexton
Poetry: the best words in the best order.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poetry as Insurgent Art
a flower knows, when its butterfly will return, and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand;but now it hurts, to watch you leave so soon,when I don't know, if you will ever come back.
— Sanober  Khan
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field.I'll meet you there.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.
— Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems
I will soothe you and heal you,I will bring you roses.I too have been covered with thorns.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Nature never did betrayThe heart that loved her.
— William Wordsworth
The Girl With Many EyesOne day in the parkI had quite a surprise.I met a girlwho had many eyes.She was really quite pretty(and also quite shocking!)and I noticed she had a mouth,so we ended up talking.We talked about flowers,and her poetry classes,and the problems she'd haveif she ever wore glasses.It's great to know a girlwho has so many eyes,but you really get wetwhen she breaks down and cries.
— Tim Burton
We would rather be ruined than changedWe would rather die in our dreadThan climb the cross of the momentAnd let our illusions die.
— W.H. Auden, The Age of Anxiety: A Baroque Eclogue
Some days I wake upand all I feelare the fracturesin the flesh that coversthe only meI've ever known.Some days,it's those exact fissuresthat let the lighthiding inside mepour outand coverin goldeveryonethat found enough beautyin the cracksto standclose.
— Tyler Knott Gregson
To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.
— John Fowles, The Magus
I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, Eyes;I wonder if It weighs like Mine,Or has an Easier size. I wonder if They bore it long,Or did it just begin?I could not tell the Date of Mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live,And if They have to try,And whether, could They choose between, It would not be, to die. I note that Some -- gone patient long --At length, renew their smile.An imitation of a LightThat has so little Oil. I wonder if when Years have piled,Some Thousands -- on the Harm Of early hurt -- if such a lapseCould give them any Balm; Or would they go on aching stillThrough Centuries above,Enlightened to a larger PainBy Contrast with the Love. The Grieved are many, I am told;The reason deeper lies, --Death is but oneand comes but once,And only nails the eyes. There's Grief of Want and Grief of Cold, --A sort they call "Despair";There's Banishment from native Eyes,In sight of Native Air. And though I may not guess the kindCorrectly, yet to meA piercing Comfort it affordsIn passing Calvary, To note the fashions of the Cross,And how they're mostly worn,Still fascinated to presumeThat Some are like My Own.
— Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore — While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
— Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poems
Was not writing poetry a secret transaction, a voice answering a voice?
— Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Wise wretch! with pleasures too refined to please,With too much spirit to be e'er at ease,With too much quickness ever to be taught,With too much thinking to have common thought:You purchase pain with all that joy can give,And die of nothing but a rage to live.
— Alexander Pope, Moral Essays
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and handand asshole holy!Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere isholy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's anangel!The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman isholy as you my soul are holy!The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice isholy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holyKerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-sady holy the unknown buggered and sufferingbeggars holy the hideous human angels!Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocksof the grandfathers of Kansas!Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bopapocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuanahipsters peace & junk & drums!Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holythe cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy themysterious rivers of tears under the streets!Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of themiddle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy MoscowHoly Istanbul!Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy theclocks in space holy the fourth dimension holythe fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy thelocomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy theabyss!Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!bodies! suffering! magnanimity!Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligentkindness of the soul!
— Allen Ginsberg, Howl and Other Poems
If I had a soul I sold itfor pretty wordsIf I had a body I usedit up spurting my essenceAllen Ginsberg warns youdont follow my pathto extinction
— Allen Ginsberg
Fuck You Poem #45Fuck you in slang and conventional English.Fuck you in lost and neglected lingoes.Fuck you hungry and sated; faded, pock marked, and defaced.Fuck you with orange rind, fennel and anchovy paste.Fuck you with rosemary and thyme, and fried green olives on the side.Fuck you humidly and icily.Fuck you farsightedly and blindly.Fuck you nude and draped in stolen finery.Fuck you while cells divide wildly and birds trill.Thank you for barring me from his bedside while he was ill.Fuck you puce and chartreuse.Fuck you postmodern and prehistoric.Fuck you under the influence of opiun, codeine, laudanum, and paregoric.Fuck every real and imagined country you fancied yourself princess of.Fuck you on feast days and fast days, below and above.Fuck you sleepless and shaking for nineteen nights running.Fuck you ugly and fuck you stunning.Fuck you shipwrecked on the barren island of your bed.Fuck you marching in lockstep in the ranks of the dead.Fuck you at low and high tide.And fuck you astride anyone who has the bad luck to fuck you, in dank hallways, bathrooms, or kitchens.Fuck you in gasps and whispered benedictions.And fuck these curses, however heartfelt and true,that bind me, till I forgive you, to you.
— Amy Gerstler, Ghost Girl
I remainMistress of mine own self and mine own soul
— Alfred Tennyson
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
The poet, therefore, is truly the thief of fire.He is responsible for humanity, for animals even; he will have to make sure his visions can be smelled, fondled, listened to; if what he brings back from beyond has form, he gives it form; if it has none, he gives it none. A language must be found…of the soul, for the soul and will include everything: perfumes, sounds colors, thought grappling with thought
— Arthur Rimbaud
Beyond myself, somewhere, I wait for my arrival.
— Octavio Paz, The Collected Poems, 1957-1987
Winter solitude-in a world of one colourthe sound of the wind.
— Bashō Matsuo
SEPTEMBER 1, 1939I sit in one of the divesOn Fifty-second StreetUncertain and afraidAs the clever hopes expireOf a low dishonest decade:Waves of anger and fearCirculate over the brightAnd darkened lands of the earth,Obsessing our private lives;The unmentionable odour of deathOffends the September night.Accurate scholarship canUnearth the whole offenceFrom Luther until nowThat has driven a culture mad,Find what occurred at Linz,What huge imago madeA psychopathic god:I and the public knowWhat all schoolchildren learn,Those to whom evil is doneDo evil in return.Exiled Thucydides knewAll that a speech can sayAbout Democracy,And what dictators do,The elderly rubbish they talkTo an apathetic grave;Analysed all in his book,The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief:We must suffer them all again.Into this neutral airWhere blind skyscrapers useTheir full height to proclaimThe strength of Collective Man,Each language pours its vainCompetitive excuse:But who can live for longIn an euphoric dream;Out of the mirror they stare,Imperialism's faceAnd the international wrong.Faces along the barCling to their average day:The lights must never go out,The music must always play,All the conventions conspireTo make this fort assumeThe furniture of home;Lest we should see where we are,Lost in a haunted wood,Children afraid of the nightWho have never been happy or good.The windiest militant trashImportant Persons shoutIs not so crude as our wish:What mad Nijinsky wroteAbout DiaghilevIs true of the normal heart;For the error bred in the boneOf each woman and each manCraves what it cannot have,Not universal loveBut to be loved alone.From the conservative darkInto the ethical lifeThe dense commuters come,Repeating their morning vow;'I will be true to the wife,I'll concentrate more on my work,'And helpless governors wakeTo resume their compulsory game:Who can release them now,Who can reach the dead,Who can speak for the dumb?All I have is a voiceTo undo the folded lie,The romantic lie in the brainOf the sensual man-in-the-streetAnd the lie of AuthorityWhose buildings grope the sky:There is no such thing as the StateAnd no one exists alone;Hunger allows no choiceTo the citizen or the police;We must love one another or die.Defenseless under the nightOur world in stupor lies;Yet, dotted everywhere,Ironic points of lightFlash out wherever the JustExchange their messages:May I, composed like themOf Eros and of dust,Beleaguered by the sameNegation and despair,Show an affirming flame.
— W.H. Auden, Another Time
I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel
A poem begins with a lump in the throat
—  a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression
Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.
— Maya Angelou
HereI'm here-the snow falling.
— Kobayashi Issa
INTO MY OWNOne of my wishes is that those dark trees,	So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,	Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,	But stretched away unto the edge of doom.	I should not be withheld but that some day	 Into their vastness I should steal away,	Fearless of ever finding open land,	Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.	I do not see why I should e’er turn back,	Or those should not set forth upon my track	 To overtake me, who should miss me here	And long to know if still I held them dear.	They would not find me changed from him they knew—	Only more sure of all I thought was true.
— Robert Frost, A Boy's Will
You will recognize your own path when you come upon it because you will suddenly have all the energy and imagination you will ever need.
— Sara Teasdale
My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.
— Frank O'Hara, Meditations in an Emergency
I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.
— Audre Lorde
The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person,for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will.
— Czesław Miłosz
This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
A wounded dear leaps the highest
— Emily Dickinson
If you would hit the mark, you must aim a little above it;Every arrow that flies feels the attraction of earth.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, In the Harbor
Morning, noon & bloody night,Seven sodding days a week,I slave at filthy WORK, that mightBe done by any book-drunk freak.This goes on until I kick the bucket.FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT
— Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
I never dreamed the sea so deep,The earth so dark; so long my sleep,I have become another child.I wake to see the world go wild.
— Allen Ginsberg
No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements.
— Amit Ray, Yoga and Vipassana: An Integrated Life Style
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,vacillating, stretched out, shivering with sleep,downward, in the soaked guts of the earth,absorbing and thinking, eating each day.
— Pablo Neruda
Women who focus on style over substance usually find themselves in a big fucking hole, with other men who want to fuck the hole. Oh so smooth, and none sophistacted. Because, you know, how sophisticated can hole-fucking really be
— Emilie Autumn
And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
— John Milton, The Complete Poetry
I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest.
— Flora Jessop, Church of Lies
And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while,After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor - And this, and so much more? -
— T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
I. Those of us born by water are never afraid enough of drowning. Bruises used to trophy my knees from my death-defying tree climb jumps. Growing up, my backyard was a forest of blackberry bushes. I learned early nothing sweet will come to you unthorned. II. At twelve your body becomes a currency. So Jenny and I sat down and cut up all our clothes into nothing. That year I failed math class but knew the exact number of calories in a carrot stick. I learned early being desired goes hand in hand with hunger.III. The last time I tried to scream I felt my father climbing up through my throat and into my mouth.IV. There is a certain kind of girl who reads Lolita at fourteen and finds religion. I painted my eyes black and sucked barroom cherries to red my tongue. There was a boy who promised Judas really did love Jesus. I learned early every kiss and betrayal are up for interpretation.V. I think he must have conferenced with my nightmares on exactly how to hurt me.VI. He never broke my heart. He only turned it into a compass that always points me back to him.
— Clementine von Radics
A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!
— Allen Ginsberg
the stars began to burnthrough the sheets of clouds,and there was a new voicewhich you slowlyrecognized as your own
— Mary Oliver
never trust anyone who says they do not see color. this means to them,you are invisible.
— Nayyirah Waheed
My love is like a red, red rose That's newly sprung in June: My love is like the melody That's sweetly played in tune. How fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in love am I; And I will love thee still, my dear, Till all the seas gang dry. Till all the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt with the sun;I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands of life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only love. And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my love, Though it were ten thousand mile.
— Robert Burns
Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If you must write prose or poems, the words you use should be your own. Don't plagiarize or take 'on loan'. There's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose, who knows, who'll trip you up and laugh when you fall.
— Morrissey
[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.
— Adrienne Rich, What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics
If you come as softlyAs wind within the treesYou may hear what I hearSee what sorrow sees.If you come as lightlyAs threading dewI will take you gladlyNor ask more of you.You may sit beside meSilent as a breathOnly those who stay deadShall remember death.And if you come I will be silentNor speak harsh words to you.I will not ask you why, now.Or how, or what you do.We shall sit here, softlyBeneath two different yearsAnd the rich earth between usShall drink our tears.
— Audre Lorde
And the most beautiful words ever spoken, I have not yet said to you.
— Nâzım Hikmet
Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.
— Heinrich Heine
So runs my dream, but what am I?An infant crying in the nightAn infant crying for the lightAnd with no language but a cry.
— Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam
If I never meet you In this lifeLet me feel the lackA glance from your eyesThen my life Will be yours
— James  Jones, The Thin Red Line
So many things I had thought forgottenReturn to my mind with stranger pain:Like letters that arrive addressed to someoneWho left the house so many years ago.
— Philip Larkin
Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims
Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left,You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass: The First (1855) Edition
It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
their heart grew coldthey let their wings down
— Sappho, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
Safety isn't always safe. You can find one on every gun.
— Andrea Gibson
A billion stars go spinning through the night,glittering above your head,But in you is the presence that will bewhen all the stars are dead.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow-You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,? that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Stories and Poems
When you are old and grey and full of sleep  And nodding by the fire, take down this book,  And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep
— W.B. Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
— Gaston Bachelard
I've triedto become someone else for a while,only to discover that he, too, was me.
— Stephen Dunn
Truths are written, never said... Lines are drawn, but then they fade.
— Colleen Hoover, Maybe Someday
I am not yours, not lost in you,Not lost, although I long to beLost as a candle lit at noon,Lost as a snowflake in the sea.You love me, and I find you stillA spirit beautiful and bright,Yet I am I, who long to beLost as a light is lost in light.
— Sara Teasdale, Love Songs
We pull our boots on with both handsbut we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorryabout the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.
— Richard Siken, Crush
Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric
—  out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.
— Jack Kerouac
If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)
— Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems
You dance inside my chest,where no one sees you,but sometimes I do, and thatsight becomes this art.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.
— G.K. Chesterton
Don't tell me you're not beautiful. You're the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight.
— Shane L. Koyczan
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
— Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me: and to meHigh mountains are a feeling, but the humof human cities torture.
— George Gordon Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman-But who is that on the other side of you?
— T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems
Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.
— John Milton, The Complete Poetry
They say that I am a poetI wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottleemotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle ondistant shores I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and forthat matter as to whether I ever get my point acrossor my love
— Saul Williams
Love is a clash of lightnings
— Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets
Love is a fire that burns unseen,a wound that aches yet isn’t felt,an always discontent contentment,a pain that rages without hurting,a longing for nothing but to long,a loneliness in the midst of people,a never feeling pleased when pleased,a passion that gains when lost in thought.It’s being enslaved of your own free will;it’s counting your defeat a victory;it’s staying loyal to your killer.But if it’s so self-contradictory,how can Love, when Love chooses,bring human hearts into sympathy?
— Luís de Camões, Sonetos de Camões
I'll Die For Your Sins If You Live For mine.
— Jim Carroll, Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems
Is it the sea you hear in me,Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel
And I learned what is obvious to a child. That life is simply a collection of little lives, each lived one day at a time. That each day should be spent finding beauty in flowers and poetry and talking to animals. That a day spent with dreaming and sunsets and refreshing breezes cannot be bettered.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
Our state cannot be severed, we are one,One flesh; to lose thee were to lose myself.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
I am God, la de dah.
— Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems
Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.
— Pablo Neruda
See with your soul and not your eyesbecause to dance with the beasts youmust penetrate their disguise.
— P.C. Cast
Each in the most hidden sack keptthe lost jewels of memory,intense love, secret nights and permanent kisses,the fragment of public or private happiness.A few, the wolves, collected thighs,other men loved the dawn scratchingmountain ranges or ice floes, locomotives, numbers.For me happiness was to share singing,praising, cursing, crying with a thousand eyes.I ask forgiveness for my bad ways:my life had no use on earth.
— Pablo Neruda, Still Another Day
But my heart is an old house(the kind my mothergrew up in)hell to heat and cooland faulty in the wiringand though it’s nice to look atI have no businessinviting lovers in.
— Clementine von Radics
The stars are brilliant at this time of night and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break  for darling, the times are quite glorious.I left him by the water’s edge,still waving long after the ship was goneand if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well. There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew. I used to go there to say goodbye. I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them, one way or the other,leaving sin on my body scrubbing tears off with saltand I built my rituals in farewells. Endings I still cling to. So I go to the ocean to say goodbye.He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my headand though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right onefor I have used them myself and there is no coming back.Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay.I turned away from the oceanas not to fall for its pleafor it used to seduce and consume meand there was this one nighta few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewellsand just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone.But I was younger then and easily fooledand the ocean was deep and dark and blueand I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones.I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival.Then days passed by and I spent them with my work and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send.But there is this one day every year or sowhen the burden gets too heavyand I collect my belongings I no longer needand make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anewand it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written wordsand I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone.  Nothing left to hold me back.You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss like chains wrapped around my veins,and if you see a fire from the shore tonightit’s my chains going up in flames. The time of moon i quite glorious. We could have been so glorious.
— Charlotte Eriksson
I act as the tongue of you,... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.
— Walt Whitman
creativity keeps the world alive, yet, everyday we are asked to be ashamed of honoring it, wanting to live our lives as artists. i’ve carried the shame of being a ‘creative’ since i came to the planet; have been asked to be something different, more, less my whole life. thank spirit, my wisdom is deeper than my shame, and i listened to who i was. i want to say to all the creatives who have been taught to believe who you are is not enough for this world, taught that a life of art will amount to nothing, know that who we are, and what we do is life. when we create, we are creating the world. remember this, and commit.
— Nayyirah Waheed
You lethargic, waiting upon me,waiting for the fire and Iattendant upon you, shaken by your beautyShaken by your beauty Shaken.
— William Carlos Williams, Paterson
Sometimes you need to sit lonely on the floor in a quiet room in order to hear your own voice and not let it drown in the noise of others.
— Charlotte Eriksson
I know many lives worth living.
— Mary Oliver
You know how this is:if I lookat the crystal moon, at the red branchof the slow autumn at my window,if I touchnear the firethe impalpable ashor the wrinkled body of the log,everything carries me to you,as if everything that exists,aromas, light, metals,were little boatsthat sailtoward those isles of yours that wait for me.
— Pablo Neruda, The Captain's Verses
Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.
— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
My world was the size of a crayon box, and it took every colour to draw her
— Sarah Kay, No Matter the Wreckage
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe."Beware the Jabberwock, my son The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!"He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought—So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought.And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came!One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back."And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy!O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy.'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.
— Lewis Carroll
Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,Sooner than I will live with you.Fish will come walking out of the sea,Sooner than you will come back to me.
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
..."vers libre," (free verse) or nine-tenths of it, is not a new metre any more than sleeping in a ditch is a new school of architecture.
— G.K. Chesterton, Fancies Versus Fads
Your thighs are appletrees. Your knees are a southern breeze.
— William Carlos Williams, The Farmers' Daughters
It is at the edge of the petal that love waits
— William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
You see how I tryTo reach with wordsWhat matters mostAnd how I fail.
— Czesław Miłosz