Quotes to inspire and reflect

there are so many people dead and so many sea-walls that the red sun used to split, and so many heads that the boats hit, and so many hands that have closed around kisses, and so many things I would like to forget.

Treacherous generals: look at my dead house, look at broken Spain.

Nobody, nothing than time which if intense

O my floating life Do not save love to the flood

Here lies my past. Good-bye I have kissed it; Thank you, kids. I wouldn’t have missed it.

I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

How confusing the beams from memory’s lamp are; One day a bachelor, the next a grampa. What is the secret of the trick? How did I get so old so quick?

I believe a little incompatibility is the spice of life, particularly if he has income and she is pattable.

There is something about a Martini, Ere the dining and dancing begin, And to tell you the truth, It is not the vermouth— I think that perhaps it’s the gin.

The trouble with a kitten is THAT Eventually it becomes a CAT.

The Bronx? No, thonx!

I think that I shall never see A billboard lovely as a tree. Indeed, unless the billboards fall I’ll never see a tree at all. 1

Candy Is dandy But liquor Is quicker.

The turtle lives ’twixt plated decks Which practically conceal its sex. I think it clever of the turtle In such a fix to be so fertile.

Murmuring gently Over fraises du bois , “I’m so ashamed of being white.”

As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me— although you’re older—and white— and somewhat more free.

What happens to a dream deferred? Maybe it just sags Or does it explode?

Good morning, daddy! Ain’t you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred?

O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet—

Wear it Like a banner For the proud— Not like a shroud.

Listen, Christ, You did alright in your day, I reckon— But that day’s gone now. They ghosted you up a swell story, too, Called it Bible— But it’s dead now.

I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother.

Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

I got the Weary Blues And I can’t be satisfied.

Rest at pale evening… A tall slim tree… Night coming tenderly Black like me.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway… He did a lazy sway… To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

I am a Negro:

I’ve known rivers: I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

In the middle of the road there was a stone there was a stone in the middle of the road there was a stone in the middle of the road there was a stone.

I have so fiercely dreamed of you And walked so far and spoken of you so, Loved a shade of you so hard That now I’ve no more left of you.

I’ll see you again, Whenever spring breaks through again.

But I believe that since my life began The most I’ve had is just A talent to amuse.

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

Patio, heaven’s watercourse. The patio is the slope down which the sky flows into the house. Serenely eternity waits at the crossway of the stars.

The New York dawn has four columns of mud and a hurricane of black doves that paddle in putrescent waters.

The light is buried under chains and noises in impudent challenge of rootless science. Through the suburbs sleepless people stagger, as though just delivered from a shipwreck of blood.

I will not see it! Tell the moon to come for I do not want to see the blood of Ignacio on the sand.

At five in the afternoon. Ah, that fatal five in the afternoon! It was five by all the clocks! It was five in the shade of the afternoon!

I touched her sleeping breasts, and they opened to me suddenly like spikes of hyacinth.

Black are the horses. The horseshoes are black. On the dark capes glisten stains of ink and of wax. Their skulls are leaden, which is why they don’t weep. With their patent leather souls they come down the street.

In the parched path I have seen the good lizard (one drop of crocodile) meditating.

Green, how much I want you green. Green wind. Green branches. The ship upon the sea and the horse in the mountain.

Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness, Could not ourselves be kind. But you, when at last it comes to pass That man can help his fellow man, Do not judge us Too harshly.

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.

Truly, I live in dark times! The guileless word is folly. A smooth forehead Suggests insensitivity. The man who laughs Has simply not yet had The terrible news.

Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear— And he shows them pearly white— Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear— And he keeps it out of sight.

Oh! Moon of Alabama We now must say good-bye We’ve lost our good old mama And must have whiskey Oh, you know why!