I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

In the theatre, people talk. Talk, talk until the cows come home about journeys of discovery and about what Hazlitt thought of a line of Shakespeare. I can’t stand it.

I’m not going to get into the ring with Tolstoy.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

I don’t like allegories.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, One clover, and a bee, And revery. The revery alone will do, If bees are few.

Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.

Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

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

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

Words without thoughts never to heaven go.

Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

For me, a paragraph in a novel is a bit like a line in a poem. It has its own shape, its own music, its own integrity.

Superstition is the poetry of life.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

In the dim background of mind we know what we ought to be doing but somehow we cannot start.

They might not need me; but they might. I’ll let my head be just in sight; a smile as small as mine might be precisely their necessity.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

As he was valiant, I honour him. But as he was ambitious, I slew him.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

A more secret, sweet, and overpowering beauty appears to man when his heart and mind open to the sentiment of virtue.

I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

You don’t have to be a renowned artist like Q-Tip to try your hand at poetry. You don’t need any special equipment – that’s the beauty of it.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

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

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

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

Give thy thoughts no tongue.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

There comes a time when the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge but can never prove how it got there.

You may be educated abroad, you may be a great scientist, politician, but you always have a sneaking fear that if you don’t go to temples or do the ordinary things that you have been told to do, something evil might happen, so you conform. What happens to the mind that conforms? Investigate it, please.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

The poetry you read has been written for you, each of you – black, white, Hispanic, man, woman, gay, straight.

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.

I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire.

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

I read poetry to save time.