Quotes to inspire and reflect

Marrying left your maiden name disused.

Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off?

Death has got something to be said for it: There’s no need to get out of bed for it; Wherever you may be, They bring it to you, free.

It is time the stone made an effort to flower, time unrest had a beating heart. It is time it were time.

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at noon death is a master from Germany we drink you at sundown and in the morning we drink death is a master from Germany his eyes are blue… he sets his pack on to us he grants us a grave in the air he plays with the serpents and daydreams death is a master

Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business, but she stands—bigly—under the unruly scrutiny, stands in the wild weed. In the wild weed she is a citizen.

The time cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.

He opened us— who was a key, who was a man.

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

And remembering… Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies. And be it gash or gold it will not come Again in this identical disguise.

What shall I give my children? who are poor, Who are adjudged the leastwise of the land.

Maud went to college. Sadie stayed at home. Sadie scraped life With a fine-tooth comb.

Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.

Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams.

And honored among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new-made clouds and happy as the heart was long, I ran my heedless ways.

And honored among wagons I was prince of the apple towns.

In the sun that is young once only, Golden in the mercy of his means.

Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother Of sunlight And the legend of the green chapels.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green.

After the first death there is no other.

And death shall have no dominion.

The hand that signed the paper felled a city; Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath, Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country; These five kings did a king to death.

They dance between their arclamps and our skull, Impose their shots, throwing the nights away. We watch the show of shadows kiss or kill, Flavoured of celluloid give love the lie.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees Is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

Light breaks where no sun shines; Where no sea runs, the waters of the heart Push in their tides.

The absolutes the eternities Their outlying districts Are not my theme I am hungry for life and for death also I know what I know and I write it.

My steps along this street Resound in another street In which I hear my steps Passing along this street In which Only the mist is real.

the world changes if two, dizzy and entwined, fall on the grass

We are condemned to kill time: Thus we die bit by bit

a crystal willow, a poplar of water, a tall fountain the wind arches over, a tree deep-rooted yet dancing still, a course of a river that turns, moves on, doubles back, and comes full circle, forever arriving:

I wish to make a noise with my feet. I want my soul to find its proper body.

We come from not being and march toward not being: nothing between two nothings, zero between two zeros, and since between two nothings nothing can be, let’s drink to the splendor of not being our bodies.

When will indifference come.

Offering dragons quarter is no good, they regrow all their parts & come on again, they have to be killed.

I haven’t lost a battle yet but I am tense for the first losing.

over a high income.

What was it missing, then, at the man’s heart so that he does not wound?

The world is gradually becoming a place where I do not care to be any more.

It is a true error to marry with poets or to be by them.

Something can (has) been said for sobriety but very little.

But I do guess mos peoples gonna lose.

He stared at ruin. Ruin stared straight back. He thought they were old friends.

I myself walked at the funeral of tenderness.

withdrew into a corner of the gorgeous room and one told the other a lie.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did, end anyone and hacks her body up and hide the pieces, where they may be found. He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing. Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up. Nobody is ever missing.