c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I have been to lots of partiesand acted perfectly disgracefulbut I never actually collapsedoh Lana Turner we love you get up
— Frank O'Hara
All the black leathershe needsis the E-Z boy reclinerwhere her love is parkedwith one of his hands wrapped around a remote,the other, a bottle of beer.She's right. It's kinky.The way he doesn't look awayfrom the TV,as her head bobsin his laplike a fisherman's floaton a nature program,hecticwith the pacehis breath sets.His crotch swellsunder her mouth'sprowess. He's sucha sweethearthe waitsuntil thecommercialsto come.
— Daphne Gottlieb, Why Things Burn
I stepped from Plank to PlankSo slow and cautiouslyThe Stars about my Head I felt,About my Feet the Sea.I knew not but the nextWould be my final inch —This gave me that precarious GaitSome call Experience.
— Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
The JewelThere is this caveIn the air behind my bodyThat nobody is going to touch:A cloister, a silenceClosing around a blossom of fire.When I stand upright in the wind,My bones turn to dark emeralds.
— James Wright, The Branch Will Not Break
Un soir qu'ils étaient couchés l'un près de l'autre, comme elle lui demandait d'inventer un poème qui commencerait par je connais un beau pays, il s'exécuta sur-le-champ. Je connais un beau pays Il est de l'or et d'églantine Tout le monde s'y sourit Ah quelle aventure fine Les tigres y sont poltrons Les agneaux ont fière mine À tous les vieux vagabonds Ariane donne des tartines. Alors, elle lui baisa le la main, et il eut honte de cette admiration.
— Albert Cohen, Belle du Seigneur
there anybody there?' said the Traveller,Knocking on the moonlit door;And his horse in the silence champed the grassesOf the forest's ferny floor.And a bird flew up out of the turret,Above the Traveller's head:And he smote upon the door again a second time;'Is there anybody there?' he said.But no one descended to the Traveller;No head from the leaf-fringed sillLeaned over and looked into his grey eyes,Where he stood perplexed and still.But only a host of phantom listenersThat dwelt in the lone house thenStood listening in the quiet of the moonlightTo that voice from the world of men:Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,That goes down to the empty hall,Hearkening in an air stirred and shakenBy the lonely Traveller's call.And he felt in his heart their strangeness,Their stillness answering his cry,While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,'Neath the starred and leafy sky;For he suddenly smote on the door, evenLouder, and lifted his head:--'Tell them I came, and no one answered,That I kept my word,' he said.Never the least stir made the listeners,Though every word he spakeFell echoing through the shadowiness of the still houseFrom the one man left awake:Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,And the sound of iron on stone,And how the silence surged softly backward,When the plunging hoofs were gone.
— Walter de la Mare
In the dark I rest,unready for the light which dawnsday after day,eager to be shared.Black silk, shelter me.I needmore of the night before I openeyes and heartto illumination. I must stillgrow in the dark like a rootnot ready, not ready at all.
— Denise Levertov
because two bodies, naked and entwined,leap over time, they are invulnerable,nothing can touch them, they return to the source,there is no you, no I, no tomorrow,no yesterday, no names, the truth of twoin a single body, a single soul,oh total being...
— Octavio Paz, Sunstone/Piedra De Sol
I saw thee once - only once - years ago:I must not say how many - but not many.It was a July midnight; and from outA full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousandRoses that grew in an enchanted garden,Where no wind dared stir, unless on tiptoe -Fell on the upturn'd faces of these rosesThat gave out, in return for the love-light,Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death -Fell on the upturn'd faces of these rosesThat smiled and died in the parterre, enchantedBy thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.Clad all in white, upon a violet bankI saw thee half reclining; while the moonFell upon the upturn'd faces of the roses,And on thine own, upturn'd - alas, in sorrow!Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight -Was it not Fate, (whose name is also Sorrow,)That bade me pause before that garden-gate,To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?No footsteps stirred: the hated world all slept,Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven! - oh, G**!How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)Save only thee and me. I paused - I looked -And in an instant all things disappeared.(Ah, bear in mind the garden was enchanted!)The pearly lustre of the moon went out:The mossy banks and the meandering paths,The happy flowers and the repining trees,Were seen no more: the very roses' odorsDied in the arms of the adoring airs.All - all expired save thee - save less than thou:Save only divine light in thine eyes -Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.I saw but them - they were the world to me.I saw but them - saw only them for hours -Saw only them until the moon went down.What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwrittenUpon those crystalline, celestial spheres!How dark a wo! yet how sublime a hope!How silently serene a sea of pride!How daring an ambition! yet how deep -How fathomless a capacity for love!But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight,Into a western couch of thunder-cloud;And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing treesDidst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.They would not go - they never yet have gone.Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.They follow me - they lead me through the years.They are my ministers - yet I their slave.Their office is to illumine and enkindle -My duty, to be saved by their bright fire,And purified in their electric fire,And sanctified in their elysian fire.They fill my soul with Beauty (which is Hope,)And are far up in Heaven - the stars I kneel toIn the sad, silent watches of my night;While even in the meridian glare of dayI see them still - two sweetly scintillantVenuses, unextinguished by the sun!
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and Other Poems
Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage, for fear I effuse unreturn'd love; But now I think there is no unreturn'd love—the pay is certain, one way or another; (I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not return'd; Yet out of that, I have written these songs.) 
— Walt Whitman
won't you celebrate with mewhat i have shaped intoa kind of life? i had no model.born in babylonboth nonwhite and womanwhat did i see to be except myself?i made it uphere on this bridge betweenstarshine and clay,my one hand holding tightmy other hand; come celebratewith me that everydaysomething has tried to kill meand has failed.
— Lucille Clifton
if youdon't want toend up insomeone else'spoem,then maybeyou shouldstarttreatingpeoplebetterfor achange.- an unapologetic poet.
— Amanda Lovelace, The Princess Saves Herself in this One
Where do the words gowhen we have said them?
— Margaret Atwood, Procedures For Underground
The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.
— Milan Kundera
I sang in my chains like the sea
— Dylan Thomas
the phantom of the man-who-would-understand,the lost brother, the twin ---for him did we leave our mothers,deny our sisters, over and over?did we invent him, conjure himover the charring log,nights, late, in the snowbound cabindid we dream or scry his facein the liquid embers,the man-who-would-dare-to-know-us?It was never the rapist:it was the brother, lost,the comrade/twin whose palmwould bear a lifeline like our own:decisive, arrowy,forked-lightning of insatiate desireIt was never the crude pestle, the blindramrod we were after:merely a fellow-creaturewith natural resources equal to our own.
— Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language
she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
We, all who live, haveA life that is livedAnd another life that is thought,And the only life we haveIt's the one that is dividedIn right or wrong.
— Fernando Pessoa
Birds are flyin' south for winter.Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.He says, "It's not that I like iceOr freezin' winds and snowy ground.It's just sometimes it's kind of niceTo be the only bird in town.
— Shel Silverstein
Love, our subject:we've trained it like ivy to our walls.
— Adrienne Rich
Far away, our dreams have nothing to do with what we do. The wind carries the night, and passes on, aimless.
— Mahmoud Darwish, Absent Presence
I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more.
— Richard Lovelace, The Lucasta Poems
Love me in actions, not in words.
— Dee Dee M. Scott, Joy Cometh In The Morning
This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
— Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
Each month is gay,Each season nice,When eatingChicken soupWith rice
— Maurice Sendak, Chicken Soup With Rice: A Book of Months
Mine Enemy is growing old --I have at last Revenge --The Palate of the Hate departs --If any would avenge Let him be quick -- the Viand flits --It is a faded Meat --Anger as soon as fed is dead --'Tis starving makes it fat
— Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
How long your closet held a whiff of you,Long after hangers hung austere and bare.I would walk in and suddenly the trueSharp sweet sweat scent controlled the airAnd life was in that small still living breath.Where are you? since so much of you is here,Your unique odour quite ignoring death.My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dearAnd vital in my longing empty arms.But other clothes fill up the space, your space,And scent on scent send out strange false alarms.Not of your odour there is not a trace.But something unexpected still breaks throughThe goneness to the presentness of you.
— Madeleine L'Engle, The Ordering of Love: The New and Collected Poems of Madeleine L'Engle
Be my lover between two wars waged in the mirror, she said.I don't want to return now to the fortress of my father's house.Take me to your vineyard.Let me meet your mother.Perfume me with basil water.Arrange me on silver dishes, comb me, imprison me in your name,let love kill me.
— Mahmoud Darwish, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems
To me, fair friend, you never can be old,For as you were when first your eye I ey'd, Such seems your beauty still.
— William Shakespeare
Of the many forms that silence takes, the most memorable is the dry husk of the cicada.
— Jon Davis
My heart is strong, I will not fail, I won't be wronged, I will prevail.
— Alexandra Lanc, Lyrics of the Heart
To the sea, to the sea! The white gulls are crying,The wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying.West, west away, the round sun is falling, Grey ship, grey ship, do you hear them calling, The voices of my people that have gone before me? I will leave, I will leave the woods that bore me;For our days are ending and our years failing.I will pass the wide waters lonely sailing.Long are the waves on the Last Shore falling,Sweet are the voices in the Lost Isle calling,In Eressea, in Elvenhome that no man can discover,Where the leaves fall not: land of my people forever!
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.
— John Keats, Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
The eye--it cannot choose but see;We cannot bid the ear be still;Our bodies feel, where'er they be,Against or with our will.
— William Wordsworth, Lyrical Ballads
because some thingssometimesaren't ours to hold,but just beautiful to listen to.
— Sanober  Khan, Turquoise Silence
It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.
— Ezra Pound
Here we go mother on the shipless ocean.Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.
— Anne Carson, Decreation
Armed I am with love. Disarmed I am.
— Manuel Alegre, 30 anos de poesia: obra poética completa
if everything happens that can't be done(and anything's righterthan bookscould plan)the stupidest teacher will almost guess(with a runskiparound we go yes)there's nothing as something as oneone hasn't a why or because or although(and buds know betterthan booksdon't grow)one's anything old being everything new(with a whatwhicharound we come who)one's everyanything soso world is a leaf so tree is a bough(and birds sing sweeterthan bookstell how)so here is away and so your is a my(with a downuparound again fly)forever was never till nownow i love you and you love me(and books are shutterthan bookscan be)and deep in the high that does nothing but fall(with a shouteacharound we go all)there's somebody calling who's wewe're anything brighter than even the sun(we're everything greaterthan booksmight mean)we're everanything more than believe(with a spinleapalive we're alive)we're wonderful one times one
— E.E. Cummings
Love is the poetry of the senses!
— Honoré de Balzac
Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
— W.H. Auden
before the gate --my walking stick's made a riverof melting snow
— Kobayashi Issa
It is not our job to remain whole.We came to lose our leavesLike the trees, and be born again,Drawing up from the great roots.
— Robert Bly
But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Sometimes he did not know if he slept or just thought about sleep.
— Mark Strand
Someday you will name me, then gently place those burning holy roses in my hair.[Songs of Longing]
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Rainer Maria Rilke - Sämtliche Werke  (Complete Works)
For we cannot tarry here,We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! 
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
I have no doubt at all the Devil grins,As seas of ink I spatter. Ye gods, forgive my "literary" sins --The other kind don't matter.
— Robert W. Service, Rhymes of a Rolling Stone
Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...
— Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
I don't want tobecause boysdon't write poetry.Girls do.
— Sharon Creech, Love That Dog
With heart at rest I climbed the citadel'sSteep height, and saw the city as from a tower,Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,Where evil comes up softly like a flower.Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;But like an old sad faithful lecher, fainTo drink delight of that enormous trullWhose hellish beauty makes me young again.Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,Sodden with day, or, new appareled, standIn gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,I love thee, infamous city! Harlots andHunted have pleasures of their own to give,The vulgar herd can never understand.
— Charles Baudelaire
She was a Phantom of delightWhen first she gleam'd upon my sight;A lovely Apparition, sentTo be a moment's ornament:Her eyes as stars of twilight fair;Like twilight's, too, her dusky hair;But all things else about her drawnFrom May-time and the cheerful dawn;A dancing shape, an image gay,To haunt, to startle, and waylay.
— William Wordsworth
Not words. nor laughter. but rather someonewho will fall in lovewith your silence.
— Sanober  Khan
The exceeding brightness of this early sunMakes me conceive how dark I have become.
— Wallace Stevens, The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play
When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.
— Bashō Matsuo
Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
— Jack Gilbert, The Great Fires
And watch two men washing clothes,one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. they seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony.Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there's really only one work.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.
— Kenneth Rexroth
Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair to them.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
It's better to swim in the sea belowThan to swing in the air and feed the crow,Says jolly Ned Teach of Bristol.
— Benjamin Franklin
Desire, loneliness, wind in the flowering almond—surely these are the great, the inexhaustible subjectsto which my predecessors apprenticed themselves.I hear them echo in my own heart, disguised as convention.
— Louise Glück, The Seven Ages
Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.
— Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth
Darling, do you rememberthe man you married? Touch me, remind me who I am.
— Stanley Kunitz
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom.
— W.H. Auden
Ye are better than all the balladsThat ever were sung or said;For ye are living poems,And all the rest are dead.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Birds of Passage
Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemm'd thee here  Within the circuit of this ivory pale,  I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;  Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:  Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,  Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.
— William Shakespeare, Venus and Adonis
contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century. 
— Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree
I do think the barsThat kept my spirit in are burst - that IAm sailing with thee through the dizzy sky!How beautiful thou art!
— John Keats, The Complete Poems
La heradera del dia destruida.(The heiress of the destroyed day.)
— Pablo Neruda
I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.
— Billy Collins, Questions About Angels
A door jumpsout from shadows,then jumps away. Thisis what I've come to find:the back door, unlatched.Tooled by insular wind, itslams and slamswithout meaningto and without meaning.
— Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You
The fountains mingle with the river,And the rivers with the ocean; The winds of heaven mix forever,With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single;All things by a law divine In one another's being mingle:— Why not I with thine? See! the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; No sister flower would be forgiven If it disdained its brother; And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea:— What are all these kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?
— Percy Bysshe Shelley
There came one and knocked at the door of the Beloved.And a voice answered and said, 'Who is there?'The lover replied, 'It is I.''Go hence,' returned the voice;'there is no room within for thee and me.'Then came the lover a second time and knocked and again the voice demanded,'Who is there?'He answered, 'It is thou.''Enter,' said the voice, 'for I am within.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
At the age of four, you were an artist. And at seven, you were a poet.
— Seth Godin, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
I heard of a manwho says words so beautifullythat if he only speaks their namewomen give themselves to him.If I am dumb beside your bodywhile silence blossoms like tumors on our lipsit is because I hear a man climb stairsand clear his throat outside our door.
— Leonard Cohen
Everything you invent is true: you can be sure of that. Poetry is a subject as precise as geometry.
— Julian Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot
Think of what starlight And lamplight would lack Diamonds and fireflies If they couldn’t lean against Black. . . .
— Mary O'Neill, Hailstones and Halibut Bones
For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see,Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be.
— Alfred Tennyson, The Complete Works of Alfred Tennyson
I held a jewel in my fingers	And went to sleep.	The day was warm, and winds were prosy;	I said: "'T will keep."I woke and chid my honest fingers,—The gem was gone;	And now an amethyst remembrance	Is all I own.
— Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Secretly, deep down, everybody on Earth believes they can write poetry, apart from the members of the Poets' Guild, who know they can't.
— K.J. Parker
Dear to me is sleep: still more, being made of stone,While pain and guilt still linger here below,Blindness and numbness--these please me alone;Then do not wake me, keep your voices low.
— Michelangelo Buonarroti
I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words.
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Poetry makes nothing happen.
— W.H. Auden
Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.
— Charles Baudelaire
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?
— W.H. Davies, The Collected Poems of William H. Davies
The poem must resist the intelligenceAlmost successfully.
— Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems
loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shapeof a helicopter the same size as the helicopterand that's it's only skilland it isn't good enoughbut it's still amazing.
— Tao Lin, this emotion was a little e-book
Stain BoyOf all the super heroes,the strangest one by far,doesn't have a special power,or drive a fancy car.next to Superman and batman, I guess he must seem tame.But to me he is quite special,and Stain Boy is his name.He can't fly around tall buildings,or outrun a speeding train,the only talent he seems to haveis to leave a nasty stain.Sometimes I know it bothers him,that he can't run or swim or fly,and because of this one ability,his dry cleaning bill is sky-high.
— Tim Burton
When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyleatop some crumbling building,spring to lifea resuscitated angel.
— Saul Williams, , said the shotgun to the head.
You can tell it's a poem because it's swimming in a little gel pack of white space. That shows it's a poem.
— Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist
Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.
— Wallace Stevens
What is the colour of Christmas?Red? The red of the toyshops on a dark winter’s afternoon,Of Father Christmas and the robin’s breast?Or green?Green of holly and spruce and mistletoe in the house, dark shadow of summer in leafless winter?One might plainly add a romance of white, fields of frost and snow;thus white, green, red- reducing the event to the level of a Chianti bottle. But many will say that the significant colour is gold, gold of fire and treasure, of light in the winter dark; and this gets closer, For the true colour of Christmas is Black.Black of winter, black of night, black of frost and of the east wind, black of dangerous shadows beyond the firelight.I am not sure who wrote this. I got it from page nine of “A Book of Christmas” by William Sansom. Google didn’t help. It is rather true I think, that the true color of Christmas is black. For like the author said in succeeding sentences “The table yellow with electric light, the fire by which stories are told, the bright spangle of the tree- they all blazé out of shadow and out of a darkness of winter
— William Sansom
A song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.
— Thomas Aquinas
Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,the dreamed as well as the lived—what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?
— Louise Glück, The Seven Ages
I had forgotten. Disgust shadows desire.Another life is never safely envied.
— Robert Wells
I wouldn’t want to be faster or greener than now if you were with me O you were the best of all my days!
— Frank O'Hara, The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara
Air goes in and outof my nose, throat, lungs, blood, heartbrain - and so I am
— Matthew Quick, Sorta Like a Rock Star
The press of my foot to the earth springs a hundred affections,They scorn the best I can do to relate them.
— Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
Equally, the surrealists consider words as witnesses of life acting in a direct way in human affairs. To use words properly it was necessary to treat them with respect, for they were the intermediaries between oneself and the rest of creation. To abuse them was immediately to set oneself adrift from true being. Words need to be coaxed to reveal a little of their true nature, so as to close the breach that exists between the writer and the universe. The world is not something alien against which man is in conflict. Rather man and cosmos exist in reciprocal motion. We are not cast adrift in an alien or meaningless environment. The universe is intimate with us and, as Breton insisted, it is a cryptogram to be deciphered.
— Michael Richardson, Dedalus Book of Surrealism 2: The Myth of the World
High FlightOh! I have slipped the surly bonds of EarthAnd danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirthof sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred thingsYou have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swungHigh in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flungMy eager craft through footless halls of air....Up, up the long, delirious, burning blueI’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.Where never lark, or even eagle flew —And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trodThe high untrespassed sanctity of space,- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
— John Gillespie Magee Jr.
In a fieldI am the absenceof field.This isalways the case.Wherever I amI am what is missing.
— Mark Strand, New Selected Poems
The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities... If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.
— Rachel Carson
whatever you dobe gentle with yourself.you don’t just livein this worldor your homeor your skin.you also livein someone’s eyes.
— Sanober  Khan
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and ThouBeside me singing in the Wilderness -And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
— Omar Khayyám
Look deeper through the telescopeand do not be afraid when the starscollide towards the darkness,because sometimes the most beautifulthings begin in chaos.
— Robert M. Drake
True Wit is Nature to advantage dress'dWhat oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd;Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,That gives us back the image of our mind.As shades more sweetly recommend the light,So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit.
— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism
You are that one breath. that puts all the remaining breaths. back into my body.
— Sanober  Khan
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence standsLike heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminously-peopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
— Philip Larkin, The Whitsun Weddings
All the rest is silenceOn the other side of the wall;And the silence ripeness,And the ripeness all.
— W.H. Auden, The Sea and the Mirror
One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can.
— William Wordsworth
Here is a story that’s stranger than strange. Before we begin you may want to arrange:a blanket, a cushion, a comfortable seat,and maybe some cocoa and something to eat.I’ll warn you, of course, before we commence, my story is eerie and full of suspense, brimming with danger and narrow escapes, and creatures of many remarkable shapes.Dragons and ogres and gorgons and more, and creatures you’ve not even heard of before. And faraway places? There’s plenty of those! (And menacing villains to tingle your toes.)So ready your mettle and steady your heart. It’s time for my story’s mysterious start...
— Robert Paul Weston, Zorgamazoo
Clear, unscalable, aheadRise the Mountains of Instead,From whose cold, cascading streamsNone may drink except in dreams.
— W.H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957
Silver hidden in the gold,Young man hidden in the old,Laughing lord with weeping eyes,Bring king and ring before sunrise! -Hilarion, The Great and Terrible Quest
— Margaret Lovett, The Great and Terrible Quest
How weightlesswords are when nothing will do.
— Philip Levine, Breath
There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting; It’s luring me on as of old; Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting So much as just finding the gold. It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder, It’s the forests where silence has lease; It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder, It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.
— Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
— John Clare, "I Am": The Selected Poetry of John Clare
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel
In visions of the night, like dropping rain, Descend the many memories of pain
— Aeschylus, Agamemnon
look, you know i don't wanna come on ungrateful, but that warren report, you know as well as me, just didn't make it. You know, like they might as well have asked some banana salesman from des moines, who was up in toronto on the big day, if he saw anyone around looking suspicious/...
— Bob Dylan, Tarantula
I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
— Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti
I do think that poetry is important though, if you don’t strive at it, if you don’t fill it full of stars and falseness.
— Charles Bukowski
Welcome, thou kind deceiver!Thou best of thieves: who, with an easy key,Dost open life, and, unperceived by us,Even steal us from ourselves.
— John Dryden, All for Love
Fascists always attack minorities,Which is an irony,'Cos fascists are a minority.
— Harry Whitewolf, Underdogs Unite
I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.
— Seamus Heaney
here’s a toast to Alan Turingborn in harsher, darker timeswho thought outside the containerand loved outside the linesand so the code-breaker was brokenand we’re sorryyes now the s-word has been spokenthe official conscience woken– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –and the story does suggesta part 2 to the Turing Test:1. can machines behave like humans?2. can we?
— Matt Harvey
In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
Otter! Otter! Otter!Don’t lead cows to slaughter!I love you, and I knowI should’ve told you soon-aBut you didn’t buy the dolphin-safe tuna!
— T.J. Klune, Bear, Otter, and the Kid
A Note Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings; to be a dog, or stroke its warm fur; to tell pain from everything it's not; to squeeze inside events, dawdle in views, to seek the least of all possible mistakes. An extraordinary chance to remember for a moment a conversation held with the lamp switched off; and if only once to stumble upon a stone, end up soaked in one downpour or another, mislay your keys in the grass; and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes; and to keep on not knowing something important.
— Wisława Szymborska
Women Are Not RosesWomen have no beginningonly continualflows.Though rivers flowwomen are notrivers.Women are notrosesthey are not oceansor stars.i would like to tellher this buti think shealready knows.
— Ana Castillo, Women Are Not Roses
Hay menos tiempo que lugar, no obstante, hay lugares que duran un minuto y para cierto tiempo no ha lugar.
— Mario Benedetti
Till Human voices wake us, and we drown.
— T.S. Eliot
The Garden En robe de parade. - SamainLike a skein of loose silk blown against a wallShe walks by the railing of a path in Kensington Gardens,And she is dying piece-mealof a sort of emotional anaemia.And round about there is a rabbleOf the filthy, sturdy, unkillable infants of the very poor.They shall inherit the earth.In her is the end of breeding.Her boredom is exquisite and excessive.She would like some one to speak to her,And is almost afraid that I will commit that indiscretion.
— Ezra Pound
Let Him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins
A book,a book fullof human touches,of shirts,a bookwithout loneliness, with menand tools,a bookis victory.
— Pablo Neruda, Odes to Common Things
hate blows a bubble of despair intohugeness world system universe and bang-fear buries a tomorrow under woeand up comes yesterday most green and young
— E.E. Cummings, Complete Poems, 1904-1962
I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.
— Francesca Lia Block, Baby Be-Bop
Reclaiming the sacred in our lives naturally brings us close once more to the wellsprings of poetry.
— Robert Bly
I sit in my treeI sing like the birdsMy beak is my penMy songs are my poems.
— David Almond, My Name Is Mina
I don't love her anymoreSoWhy should I walkNightsBy the tavernWhere I drankEvery nightThinking of her?
— Orhan Veli Kanık, I, Orhan Veli
People with yuan fen are destined to like one another;Friendship develops even if a thousand miles apart.But should yuan fen be absent between two individuals,They will remain strangers despite sitting face-to-face
— Adeline Yen Mah, Chinese Cinderella and the Secret Dragon Society
Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes!" What does one do with all this crap?
— Jack Spicer
Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.
— Naomi Shihab Nye, Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets
Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiò todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.
— Pablo Neruda, Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada
I offer you what I have myPoverty
— W.S. Merwin
When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.
— Ted Kooser, Braided Creek
This, this indeed is to be accursed, For if we mortals love, or if we sing, We count our joys not by what we have, But by what kept us from that perfect thing.
— Paul Laurence Dunbar
No one here likes a wet dog.
— Billy Collins
Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walkonly on feelings. That faces upwardand in its mirrorreceives heavenly roads, which travelalong themselves.That has learned to walk upon waterwhen it scoops,that walks upon wells,transfiguring every path.That steps into other hands,changes those that are like itinto a landscape:wanders and arrives within them,fills them with arrival.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Prose: words in their best order
—  poetry: the best words in the best order.
Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fire of a great mystery.I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.
— Mary Oliver, House of Light
From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,There's nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends.
— Hilaire Belloc
World is suddener than we fancy it.
— Louis MacNeice, Collected Poems of Louis MacNeice
Love is the only bow on Life’s dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher.It is the air and light of every heart – builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody – for music is the voice of love.Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.
— Robert G. Ingersoll
There's in my mind a...turbulent moon-ridden girlor old woman, or both,dressed in opals and rags, feathersand torn taffeta,who knows strange songsbut she is not kind.
— Denise Levertov, Poems, 1972-1982
Sweet is the lore which nature brings
— Our meddling intellectMisshapes the beauteous forms of things
Sully suffers from a stutter,simple syllables will clutter,stalling speeches up on beacheslike a sunken sailboat rudder.Sully strains to say his phrases,sickened by the sounds he raises,strings of thoughts come out in knots,he solves his sentences like mazes.At night, he writes his thoughts insteadand sighs as they steadily rush from his head.
— Bo Burnham, Egghead: Or, You Can't Survive on Ideas Alone
Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power.Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
— Andrew Marvell, The Complete Poems
When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first,But a patriot climbedWith a thought in mind:‘Never your duty shirk.’Up the iron ladyHe stealthily made his way,Hanging the bright tricolour,He heroically saved the day.Then, for some strange reason,A mystery to this day,Hitler never climbed the tower,On the ground he had to stay.At last he ordered she be razedDown to a twisted pile.A futile attack, for still she standsBeaming her metallic smile.
— E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly
Twas noontide of summer,And mid-time of night;And stars, in their orbits,Shone pale, thro' the lightOf the brighter, cold moon,'Mid planets her slaves,Herself in the Heavens,Her beam on the waves.I gazed awhileOn her cold smile;Too cold–too cold for me-There pass'd, as a shroud,A fleecy cloud,And I turned away to thee,Proud Evening Star,In thy glory afar,And dearer thy beam shall be;For joy to my heartIs the proud partThou bearest in Heaven at night,And more I admireThy distant fire,Than that colder, lowly light.
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Complete Poetry
I have no words — alas! — to tellThe loveliness of loving well!
— Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe: Selected Poems
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
— Thomas Hardy
Oh I know it's cliché but yeah they say that great men make it in-To places few others who even do take the risk've ever been
— Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality
Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o'er life's solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night
Άλλα ζητεί η ψυχή σου, γι’ άλλα κλαίει·
— Constantinos P. Cavafis, Collected Poems
When I say that I love animals, I mean to say that I am IN love with them. Because they don't know evil and have never been tempted by it. Because they are the purest image of any higher being I have ever known. Because their souls are made of a much larger magic than my own, and if you let them, they will show it to you. Because this world is theirs, they were here first. And we should all love them a little more for graciously allowing us to have so much of it.
— Mia Hollow
a woman will tell youevery home she has ever inhabitedhas been broken intostarting with her body
— Suheir Hammad, Zaatardiva
¡Los suspiros son aire y van al aire!¡Las lágrimas son agua y van al mar!Dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida¿sabes tú adónde va?
— Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss.
— Paul Celan
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.
— John Keats
Her close friends have gathered.Lord, ain't it a shameGrieving togetherSharing the blame.But when she was dyingLord, we let her down.There's no use cryin'It can't help her now.The party's all overDrink up and go home.It's too late to love herAnd leave her alone.Just say she was someoneLord, so far from homeWhose life was so lonesomeShe died all aloneWho dreamed pretty dreamsThat never came trueLord, why was she bornSo black and blue?Oh, why was she bornSo black and blue?Epitaph (Black And Blue) Written by: Kris KristoffersonNote: "Epitaph" is about Janis Joplin.
— Kris Kristofferson
Little world, full of little peopleshouting for recognition, screaming for love, Rolling world, teeming with millions,carousel of the hungry,Is there food enough? Wheat and corn will not do.The fat are the hungriest of all, the skinny the most silent.
— James Kavanaugh, There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
Let's get loosewith compassion.Let's drown in the deliciousambiance oflove.
Don't sign your namebetween worlds,surmountthe manifold of meanings,trust the tearstain,learn to live.
— Paul Celan, Glottal Stop
Open the fridge and putMy heart on a plate.I'm just as you leftme, and I taste even betterleftover.
— Cecily von Ziegesar, Don't You Forget About Me
Unless you call attentionto your presencewho will know you're there?Even a countryhas to weave and wave a flagas proof of its existence.
— Rod McKuen
Art too is just a way of living.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.
— George Gordon Byron
I'm going to do something bigger and better,bigger and betterand bolder, but first,I'm going to do somethingsmaller and worse.
— JonArno Lawson
I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.
— Mary Karr, Lit
A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.
— Robert Frost
I couldn't tell fact from fiction,Or if the dream was trueMy only sure predictionIn this world was you.I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.
— Maya Angelou
You must be careful not to deprive the poem of its wild origin.
— Stanley Kunitz
What's madness but nobility of soulAt odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!I know the purity of pure despair,My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,That place among the rocks--is it a cave,Or winding path? The edge is what I have............... Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,Keeps buzzing at the sill.~From "The Waking" by Theodore Roethke
— Theodore Roethke
My Personalityunfolding before youlike a Swiss Army knife.
— Katerina Stoykova Klemer, The air around the butterfly/Въздухът около пеперудата
I've written some poetry I don't understand myself
— Carl Sandburg
But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats.For they would surely kill us.
— Glenway Wescott
Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed.Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.Play with syntax.Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better – if you have to say it, you will.Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.If you ask a question, don’t answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time).Maximum sentence length: seventeen words.Minimum: One.Don’t be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don’t love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.
— Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing
Ξέρω: κηρύγματα καὶ ρητορεῖες πάλι, θὰ πεῖς.Ἔ ναὶ λοιπόν! Κηρύγματα καὶ ρητορεῖες.Σὰν πρόκες πρέπει νὰ καρφώνονται οἱ λέξειςΝὰ μὴν τὶς παίρνει ὁ ἄνεμος.
— Μανόλης Αναγνωστάκης