Poetry Life Quotes

“Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.”
― Jess C Scott, EyeLeash: A Blog Novel

“History repeats itself. Someone says this.
History throws its shadow over beginning, over the desktop, over the sock drawer with its socks, its hidden letters.
history is the little man in a brown suit trying to define a room he is outside of,
I know history. There are many names in history... but none of them are ours.”
― Richard Siken, Crush

“You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“I don't feel strong anymore
I feel like falling to my knees.
Things aren't the way they were before,
They're not the way they're supposed to be.”
― Atarah L. Poling, Hidden Light

“I yearn to make these scars disappear
And to forget about the past.
To throw away all of my fears
And to be happy at last.”
― Atarah L. Poling, Hidden Light

“The day came when she discovered sex, sensuality, and literature; she said, 'I submit! Let my life be henceforth ruled by poetry. Let me reign as the queen of my dreams until I become nothing less than the heroine of God.”
― Roman Payne

“-Desiderata-

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.”
― Max Ehrmann, Desiderata of Happiness

“This is where I belong, burning in these flames. For everything I have done wrong, I know I am to blame.”
― Atarah L. Poling, Hidden Light

“In an age when nations and individuals routinely exchange murder for murder, when the healing grace of authentic spirituality is usurped by the divisive politics of religious organizations, and when broken hearts bleed pain in darkness without the relief of compassion, the voice of an exceptional poet producing exceptional work is not something the world can afford to dismiss.”
― Aberjhani, The American Poet Who Went Home Again

“Sesungguhnya aku ini seorang penganggur.
Aku lebih banyak bingung dan menyibukkan diri dengan perkara-perkara remeh
hanya untuk menjaga penampilanku di hadapanMu.
(Penganggur,1989)”
― Joko Pinurbo

“What am I to do?
What is my destiny?
I have no idea, not a clue
Feeling lost and empty.
What is my dream?
What is my future?
I beg thee to listen to me,
I beg thee to answer.”
― Atarah L. Poling, Hidden Light

“Todos los secretos están guardados en un mismo cajón, el cajón de los secretos, y si develas uno, corres el riesgo de que pase lo mismo con los demás.”
― Laura Restrepo, Delirio

“I could make love with you until the moon decides to never glow again.”
― Melody Lee, Moon Gypsy

“Llevo un equipaje de silencio. Me he rodeado de un silencio tan hondo y duradero que nunca acierto a abrirme con las palabras. Cuando hablo, solamente me cierro de otra manera.”
― Herta Muller

“Each in His Own Tongue
A fire mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where the cave men dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod —
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.
A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite, tender sky,
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high;
And all over upland and lowland
The charm of the goldenrod —
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.

Like tides on a crescent sea beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
Into our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in;
Come from the mystic ocean,
Whose rim no foot has trod —
Some of us call it Longing,
And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood,
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the rood;
And millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight, hard pathway plod —
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.”
― William Herbert Carruth

“We had the experience but missed the meaning,
an approach to the meaning restores the experience”
― T. S. Elliot

“Once a hunter met a lion near the hungry critter's lair,
and the way that lion mauled him was decidedly unfair;
but the hunter never whimpered when the surgeons, with their thread,
sewed up forty-seven gashes in his mutilated head;
and he showed the scars in triumph, and they gave him pleasant fame,
and he always blessed the lion that had camped upon his frame.
Once that hunter, absent minded, sat upon a hill of ants,
and about a million bit him, and you should have seen him dance!
And he used up lots of language of a deep magenta tint,
and apostrophized the insects in a style unfit to print.
And it's thus with worldly troubles;
when the big ones come along, we serenely go to meet them, feeling valiant, bold and strong, but the weary little worries with their poisoned stings and smarts, put the lid upon our courage, make us gray, and break our hearts.”
― walt mason

“What do you do when the alienating silence deafens your 'bootless cries'?”
― Solange nicole

“Нет такой формы банальности, которую нельзя без труда превратить в пятистопный ямб. Если человек научился считать до десяти, ему не сложно начать новую строку с каждого одиннадцатого слога или отбивать каждый второй слог с ударением.”
― Ezra Pound

“My poetry lives in the spaces of time, in between time, in time out. It is not a constant vibe; I catch it like the incoming tide, going out again. It will not let me say what I want to say for words cannot be woven together to express me that way. My words have learned to be patient for nothing. Now is my time out.”
― Tonny Brown

“Contemporary poets got so obscure that poetry kind of fell out of favor,”
― Paul Ruffin

“The best part of being a poet is not only in giving shape to the unseen, turning fleeting moments and quiet emotions into something lasting. It’s in how words unravel what’s hidden, daring to speak truths too raw, too real, and too dangerous to be spoken.”
― Bhuwan Thapaliya

“Loving someone you can never have feels the same as losing someone you loved.”
― Dolores Q. Washington, It's About the Smile

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One

“maybe survival’s just learning how to breathe again under strange skies, and calling it another night made beautiful by accident, the kind where the silence hums like memory,
and you realize the miracle isn’t that you lived — t’s that you kept loving the world anyway.”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Living Colorful Beauty

“Maybe healing
isn’t about becoming
whole again.

Maybe it’s about creating
something beautiful
from the fragments that
remain.”
― Marjory Qwen, From Scars to Stars: Pieces of a Healing Heart

“Perhaps we need to suffer a little
to strengthen.
We’re like glass, all of us
perhaps we need to break a little
leaving the cracks open
for light to enter.”
― Hania Shaikh, Ephemeral Night Skies

“The train whistles at 2 a.m.
cutting through fields of sleeping rice.
I press my forehead to the glass—
villages blink, then vanish. Somewhere between stations,
I write your name
on the fogged window.
By dawn,
it is gone.
Like you.
Like me”
― Avijeet Das, A Handful of Shuilis

“My pen shall forever awaken the hidden dreams and silent visions dwelling in the depths of my heart, until my name resounds like a timeless echo across the ages.”
― Eduvie Donald

“I have had similar experiences as Jack Kerouac had while living alone. You do love your solitude and get time for yourself.

You have all the time in the world for writing down your thoughts and experiences. You feel inspired to write them all down about your feelings, emotions, and happenings.

But at times the loneliness does get to you! And sometimes you just keep staring at the sky to find the meaning of life.”
― Avijeet Das