Quotes to inspire and reflect

Poetry is life distilled.

Touched by poetry, language is more fully language and at the same time is no longer language: it is a poem.

A good poem is like a bouillon cube. It’s concentrated, you carry it around with you, and it nourishes you when you need it.

A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a home-sickness or a love-sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found the words.

The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.

A poem is less a thing than any other work of art.

Apologize, v.i . To lay the foundation for a future offense.

because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

There is room in the halls of pleasure For a large and lordly train, But one by one we must all file on Through the narrow isles of pain.

It is not shameful for man to succumb under pain, and it is shameful for him to succumb under pleasure.

Pleasure is oft a visitant; but pain Clings cruelly to us.

Pain wastes the body; pleasures, the understanding.

There is a pleasure in poetic pains Which only poets know.

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure .

When pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.

In educating the young we use pleasure and pain as rudders to steer their course.

That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

It’s true Heaven forbids some pleasures, but a compromise can usually be found.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.

Debauchee, n . One who has so earnestly pursued pleasure that he has had the misfortune to overtake it.

When Pleasure is at the bar the jury is not impartial.

The more he plumbed the depths of sensual pleasure, the more he emerged with grit rather than pearls.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

The man who does not play has lost forever the child who lived in him, and he will certainly miss him.

In the carriages of the past you can’t go anywhere.

Each had his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title.

The passions are the only orators which always persuade.

Passion makes the best observations and draws the most wretched conclusions.

A man in passion rides a horse that runs away with him.

Passion, though a bad regulator, is a powerful spring.

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

Parents are the bones on which children sharpen their teeth.

There is no magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one’s parents.

Parentage is a very important profession; but no test of fitness for it is ever imposed in the interest of the children.

as the silent voice of our parents from the country of the dead.

It’s frightening to think that you mark your children merely by being yourself.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.

He has seen but half the universe who never has been shown the house of pain.

It is easy for the one who stands outside The prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one Who suffers.

Pain is always new to the sufferer, but loses its originality for those around him.

The greater the obstacle, the greater the glory in overcoming it; and difficulties are but the maids of honor to set off the virtue.

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points of the wind, and extract a motive power out of the greatest obstacles.

Every obstacle yields to stern resolve.

The block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong.

A novel is a mirror which passes over a highway. Sometimes it reflects to your eyes the blue of the skies, at others the churned-up mud of the road.

If there are obstacles, the shortest line between two points may be the crooked line.

A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images.

A novel, in the end, is a container, a shape which you are trying to pour your story into.