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

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

If you can talk, you can write.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

To me, the extraordinary aspect of martial arts lies in its simplicity. The easy way is also the right way, and martial arts is nothing at all special; the closer to the true way of martial arts, the less wastage of expression there is.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

I only act from my heart.

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love.

Any artist, the work you do, if it’s a painting or if it’s a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else’s life. That’s what’s fun about sharing art.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

Love is an emotion that is based on an opinion of women that is impossible for those who have had any experience with them.

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

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

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

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

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire.

Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

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?

The greatest service that can be offered to children who show personality traits or inclinations that might not be understood by the adults around them is to allow them to express their own unique humanity.

It is a fact often observed, that men have written good verses under the inspiration of passion, who cannot write well under other circumstances.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

To a guy like me, a laugh is full of information.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

I wanted very much to learn to draw, for a reason that I kept to myself: I wanted to convey an emotion I have about the beauty of the world.

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

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

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things made matter very little – somebody who is obsessed by Making.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

You can stroke people with words.

The gross heathenism of civilization has generally destroyed nature, and poetry, and all that is spiritual.

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.

Nature is the incarnation of thought. The world is the mind precipitated.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

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

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

Preaching is the expression of the moral sentiment in application to the duties of life.

I’m nobody, who are you?

I hate the idea of genres.

Music is this divine thing, the closest that we can get to something divine. It’s like this instinct we all own, and some of us have found a way to hear that music and write it down and share it with people.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.

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

Why should poetry have to make sense?

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.