Quote collection
280 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist."
"The poet must not only write the poem but must scrutinize the world intensely, or anyway that part of the world he or she has taken for subject. If the poem is thin, it is likely so not because the poet does not know enough words, but because he or she has not stood long enough among the flowers--has not seen them in any fresh, exciting, and valid way."
"In the glare of your mind, be modest. And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling."
"Things take the time they take. don't worry. How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?"
"Writers sometimes give up what is most strange and wonderful about their writing - soften their roughest edges - to accommodate themselves toward a group response."
"It's very important to write things down instantly, or you can lose the way you were thinking out a line. I have a rule that if I wake up at 3 in the morning and think of something, I write it down. I can't wait until morning - it'll be gone."
"What can we do but keep on breathing in and out, modest and willing, and in our places?"
"And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you."
"Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last! What a task to ask of anything, or anyone, yet it is ours, and not by the century or the year, but by the hours."
"Attention without feeling is only a report."
"I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention."
"A dog is adorable and noble, a dog is a true and loving friend. A dog is also a hedonist."
"What I have done is learn to love and learn to be loved. That didn't come easy."
"I got saved by poetry. And I got saved by the beauty of the world."
"But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?"
"Why should I not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside, looking into the shining world?"
"Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible."
"My work is loving the world."
"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."
"Every morning I walk like this around the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart ever close, I am as good as dead."