Quotes to inspire and reflect

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

The world in which we live and move Outlasts aversion, outlasts love: Outlasts each effort, interest, hope, Remorse, grief, joy.

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail, with unshut eye, Round the world forever and aye.

Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still, Out-topping knowledge.

Strong is the soul, and wise, and beautiful: The seeds of godlike power are in us still: Gods are we, bards, saints, heroes, if we will.

My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, From first youth tested up to extreme old age, Business could not make dull, nor passion wild: Who saw life steadily and saw it whole.

What do I care that you are good? Be beautiful! and be sad! 11

O Death, old captain, it is time! raise the anchor! 9

What is that sad, dark island?—It is Cythera, They tell us, a country famous in song, Banal Eldorado of all the old bachelors. Look! after all, it is a poor land! 8

Here is the charming evening, the criminal’s friend; It comes like an accomplice, with stealthy tread. 7

I am the wound and the knife! I am the blow and the cheek! I am the limbs and the wheel— The victim and the executioner! 6

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. 5

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure, Richness, quietness and pleasure. 4

Perfumes, colors and sounds echo one another

The poet is like the prince of the clouds Who haunts the tempest and laughs at the archer; Exiled on the ground in the midst of jeers, His giant wings prevent him from walking. 1

I am as one disembodied, triumphant, dead.

Hypocrite lecteur—mon semblable—mon frère [Hypocrite reader—my double—my brother]!

A noiseless patient spider, I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated, Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding, It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament out of itself, Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

Camerado, this is no book, Who touches this touches a man.

I dream in my dream all the dreams of the other dreamers, And I become the other dreamers.

I am she who adorn’d herself and folded her hair expectantly, My truant lover has come, and it is dark.

A batter’d, wreck’d old man, Thrown on this savage shore, far from home, Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken’d and nigh to death, I take my way along the island’s edge, Venting a heavy heart.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle, Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

The horizon’s edge, the flying sea-crow, the fragrance of salt marsh and shore mud, These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day.

There was a child went forth every day, And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting.

Exult O shores, and ring O bells! But I with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead.

Come lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later delicate death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?

Nor for you, for one alone, Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring, For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

Word over all, beautiful as the sky, Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost, That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever again, this soil’d world; For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead.

Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling.

Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested, Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips. The Wound-Dresser

Young man I think I know you—I think this face is the face of the Christ himself, Dead and divine and brother of all, and here again he lies.

Words! book-words! what are you?

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

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!

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight.

Come Muse migrate from Greece and Ionia, Cross out please those immensely overpaid accounts, That matter of Troy and Achilles’ wrath, and Aeneas’, Odysseus’ wanderings, Placard “Removed” and “To Let” on the rocks of your snowy Parnassus.

A great city is that which has the greatest men and women, If it be a few ragged huts it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the walk in the street and the passage over the river.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.

Through you I drain the pent-up rivers of myself, In you I wrap a thousand onward years.

As Adam early in the morning, Walking forth from the bower refresh’d with sleep, Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach, Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, Be not afraid of my body.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

If anything is sacred the human body is sacred.