Poet Quotes

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

America, I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.

Poets are Damned... but See with the Eyes of Angels.

Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.

Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking.

And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof.

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand.