Quotes to inspire and reflect

A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”

It is not a carol of joy or glee, But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core… I know why the caged bird sings! 1

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind.

Should the wide world roll away Leaving black terror Limitless night, Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand Would be to me essential If thou and thy white arms were there And the fall to doom a long way.

How slow the shadow creeps: but when ’tis past How fast the shadows fall. How fast! How fast!

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered; “But I like it “Because it is bitter, “And because it is my heart.” 1

When I am dead, I hope it may be said: “His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.”

Of this bad world the loveliest and the best Has smiled and said “Good Night,” and gone to rest.

Here richly, with ridiculous display, The Politician’s corpse was laid away. While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme. But Money gives me pleasure all the time.

Matilda told such dreadful lies, It made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes; Her aunt, who, from her earliest youth, Had kept a strict regard for truth, Attempted to believe Matilda: The effort very nearly killed her.

For every time she shouted “Fire!” They only answered “Little liar!” And therefore when her aunt returned, Matilda, and the house, were burned.

When people call this beast to mind, They marvel more and more At such a little tail behind, So large a trunk before.

The chief defect of Henry King Was chewing little bits of string.

I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds, Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln.

Child! do not throw this book about; Refrain from the unholy pleasure Of cutting all the pictures out! Preserve it as your chiefest treasure.

Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you— It takes life to love life.

Out of me unworthy and unknown The vibrations of deathless music.

Hear me, ambitious souls, Sex is the curse of life!

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines!

A great nose indicates a great man— Genial, courteous, intellectual, Virile, courageous.

All, all, are sleeping on the hill.

Every true history is contemporary history. 1

Bird sighs for the air, Thought for I know not where, For the womb the seed sighs. Now sinks the same rest On mind, on nest, On straining thighs.

On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut:

Under bare Ben Bulben’s head In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.

I must lie down where all the ladders start, In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.

Irish poets, learn your trade, Sing whatever is well made.

Fifteen apparitions have I seen; The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.

Players and painted stage took all my love, And not those things that they were emblems of.

What shall I do for pretty girls Now my old bawd is dead?

Like a long-legged fly upon the stream His mind moves upon silence.

Down the mountain walls From where Pan’s cavern is Intolerable music falls. Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear, Belly, shoulder, bum, Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs Copulate in the foam.

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, And say my glory was I had such friends.

You think it horrible that lust and rage Should dance attention upon my old age; They were not such a plague when I was young; What else have I to spur me into song?

John Synge, I and Augusta Gregory, thought All that we did, all that we said or sang Must come from contact with the soil, from that Contact everything Antaeus-like grew strong.

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot! A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot. Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again! The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.

An old man’s eagle mind.

Grant me an old man’s frenzy, Myself must I remake Till I am Timon and Lear Or that William Blake Who beat upon the wall Till Truth obeyed his call.

My temptation is quiet. Here at life’s end Neither loose imagination, Nor the mill of the mind Consuming its rag and bone, Can make the truth known.

If soul may look and body touch, Which is the more blest?

Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes, Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.

All perform their tragic play, There struts Hamlet, there is Lear.

Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages, And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages, It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

I pray—for fashion’s word is out And prayer comes round again— That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.

The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?

I gave what other women gave That stepped out of their clothes, But when this soul, its body off, Naked to naked goes, He it has found shall find therein What none other knows.

He that sings a lasting song Thinks in a marrowbone.