Poet Quotes

An experienced reader uses the poem as an agent of inquiry. This makes poetry very exciting, unstable, and interactive.

Poets have to be sensitive to their audience, but it does not mean that they censor themselves. I realise my audience is diverse. Some will read with empathy and curiosity while others will take offense.

A literary journal is intended to connect writer with reader; the role of the editor is to mediate.

No poem is easily grasped; so why should any reader expect fast results?

Welcome, wild harbinger of spring! To this small nook of earth; Feeling and fancy fondly cling, Round thoughts which owe their birth, To thee, and to the humble spot, Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.

No age, sex, or condition is above or below the absolute necessity of modesty; but without it one is vastly beneath the rank of man.

As I walk'd by myself, I talk'd to myself, And myself replied to me; And the questions myself then put to myself, With their answers I give to thee.

Money is the sovereign queen of all delights - for her, the lawyer pleads, the soldier fights.

As it fell upon a day in the merry month of May, sitting in a pleasant shade which a grove of myrtles made.

He that is thy friend indeed, he will help thee in thy need: if thou sorrow, he will weep; if you wake, he cannot sleep; thus of every grief in heart he with thee doth bear a part.

All is amiss. Love is dying, faith's defying, heart's denying.

A mass of dust, world's momentary slave, Is man, in state of our old Adam made, Soon born to die, soon flourishing to fade.

Ah, sweet Content, where doth thine harbour hold.

There are many advantages in their being accustomed to the use of arms, and no possible disadvantage.

It is because the people are citizens that they are with safety armed.

How could you fear a dearth? Have not mankind tho' slain by millions, millions left behind?

A habitual disuse of physical forces totally destroys the moral; and men lose at once the power of protecting themselves, and of discerning the cause of their oppression.

And should think freedom more to prize, than all the gold in world that is.

The dead of midnight is the noon of thought.

When one by one our ties are torn, and friend from friend is snatched forlorn; when man is left alone to mourn, oh! then how sweet it is to die!

But every act in consequence of our faith, strengthens faith.

We neither laugh alone, nor weep alone, why then should we pray alone?

The most characteristic mark of a great mind is to choose some one important object, and pursue it for life.

To name something is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass.

Thought is more important than art. To revere art and have no understanding of the process that forces it into existence, is finally not even to understand what art is.

This is said to us, even as this counterfeit president has legalized the Confederate Flag in Mississippi.

There is other disturbing facts surround the hideous 911 attacks, which my family and I could see from the third floor bathroom window of our homes!

God has been replaced, as he has all over the West, with respectability and air conditioning.

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist.