Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.
A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead.
A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can’t help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
Money is the necessity that frees us from necessity.
In life the loser’s score is always zero.
Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
Swans in the winter air A white perfection have.
The poet marries the language, and out of this marriage the poem is born.
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is therefore not at all a desirable quality in a chief of state.
If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
Drama began as the act of a whole community. Ideally, there would be no speculators. In practice, every member of the audience should feel like an understudy.
Man desires to be free and he desires to feel important. This places him in a dilemma, for the more he emancipates himself from necessity the less important he feels.
The eye likes novelty, but the ear craves familiarity.
The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.