#poetry

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel. ↗

— Chaim Potok

#anticipating #bible #book #called #consider

THE THOUGHTFUL LOVER Deny yourself all half things. Have it or leave it. But it will keep—or it is not worth the having. Never start anything you can't finish— However do not lose faith because you are starved! She loves you she says. Believe it —tomorrow. But today the particulars of poetry that difficult art require your whole attention. ↗

— William Carlos Williams

#art

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ↗

— Salman Rushdie

#frauds #going #name #poet #point

I hope for a light grief in old age. I was born in Rome and it has returned to me. My autumn was a kind of she-wolf, And August - the month of Caesars - smiled at me. ↗

— Osip Mandel'shtam

#age

Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#idealistic #life #ones #poetry #treated

Poetry is a sort of truancy, a dream within the dream of life, a wild flower planted among our wheat. ↗

— Michael Joseph Oakeshott

#dream #poetry #art

Love could never be forever only for a lifetime, only God can love eternally. ↗

— Jeannette Scollard

#poetry #love

You see another who looks thirsty. Walking over to them, you nudge them on the back. They look at you, and you gesture toward the lake with your head. You and the other walk over there, and you are content and you are happy. You are home. ↗

— Amanda Leigh

#home

This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man's art For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#plays #poetry #viola #wise #art

There is a deep truth in being at home enough with someone to kiss them while your lips are dry. And happiness may not be the greatest of things to hear, but it should be. ↗

— Mikl Paul

#poetry #prose-poetry #home