Poet Quotes

Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.

Patience and time do more than strength or passion.

We consume our tomorrows fretting about our yesterdays.

Tomorrow is the day when idlers work, and fools reform, and mortal men lay hold on heaven.

Out of nothing can come, and nothing can become nothing.

Oh, what a void there is in things.

Is any man free except the one who can pass his life as he pleases?

He conquers who endures.

Each man has his own desires; all do not possess the same inclinations.

And don't consult anyone's opinions but your own.

If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.

However, no two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is - in other words, not a thing, but a think.

Think then you are Today what Yesterday you were - Tomorrow you shall not be less.

There was the Door to which I found no key; There was the Veil through which I might see.

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes, But Here or There as strikes the Player goes.

Taste is the feminine of genius.

Strange, is it not? That of the myriads who Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through, Not one returns to tell us of the Road Which to discover we must travel too.

If you can prove to me that one miracle took place, I will believe he is a just God who damned us all because a woman ate an apple.

I sometimes think that never blows so red The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled; That every Hyacinth the Garden wears Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

I come like Water, and like Wind I go.

I came like Water, and like Wind I go.

I am all for the short and merry life.

And much as Wine has played the Infidel, And robbed me of my Robe of Honor Well, I often wonder what the Vintners buy One half so precious as the stuff they sell.

Ah, take the Cash in hand and waive the Rest.

A book of verses underneath the bough, A jug of wine, a loaf of bread-and thou.

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop, The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.

Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different.

The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture.