O‘ What may man within him hide, though angel on the outward side!

Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone.

If something can corrupt you, you’re corrupted already.

In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.

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

No one has ever learned fully to know themselves.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

Public behavior is merely private character writ large.

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery.

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

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one’s self.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

What we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

We humans are self-absorbed by nature, and spend most of our time focusing inwardly on our emotions, on our wounds, on our fantasies.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.

Vanity can create a very cruel space for you if you don’t know how to manage it.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

If you aren’t in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

The question is not, ‚Do you have a problem?‘ The question is, ‚Does the problem have you?‘

Nature is not human hearted.

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

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

It is important to remember yourself.

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

I was in a queer mood, thinking myself very old: but now I am a woman again – as I always am when I write.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

If I wasn’t Bob Dylan, I’d probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated, and this was an immutable law.

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

I can be a cruel person.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

I’m selfish.

The waving of a pine tree on the top of a mountain – a magic wand in Nature’s hand – every devout mountaineer knows its power; but the marvelous beauty value of what the Scotch call a breckan in a still dell, what poet has sung this?

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

It is true that we are weak and sick and ugly and quarrelsome but if that is all we ever were, we would millenniums ago have disappeared from the face of the earth.