Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person’s life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader’s style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move. Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

Why need I volumes, if one word suffice?

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

And why not death rather than living torment? To die is to be banish’d from myself; And Silvia is myself: banish’d from her Is self from self: a deadly banishment!

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there’s a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.

The unyielding resistance of the Cuban patriots is symbolized by our 5 Heroes. They shall never back down! They shall never surrender!

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.

There is a wide, yawning black infinity. In every direction, the extension is endless; the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce.

The death of Abdel Nasser on September 28, 1970, was an irreversible setback for Egypt.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

I don’t think of poetry as a ‚rational‘ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world… to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Death is the king of this world: ‚Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Death is a fearful thing.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

When men and woman die, as poets sung, his heart’s the last part moves, her last, the tongue.

Obviously, there’s a part of me that takes the world of violence and death very seriously. However, when it comes to protection, or when it comes to just the skill of shooting… I’ve gone to the range with sniper rifles and things like that.

I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn’t until I was about 30 that I got serious about writing prose. While I was writing poems, I would often divert myself by reading detective novels; I liked them.

Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.

I simply can’t build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death… I think… peace and tranquillity will return again.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

Death and genitals are things that frighten people, and when people are frightened, they develop means of concealment and aggression. It is common sense.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time.

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.