quotes from classic

My old teacher's definition of poetry is an attempt to understand.

more quotes from Thom Gunn

Donald Davie was someone whom I got to know shortly before his death. He was consistently supportive, very kind to me, but he was very against queers.

more quotes from Thom Gunn

I was writing about things that matter to me - about the people disappearing all around me.

more quotes from Thom Gunn

Edmund White said he thought coming out in public was good for any writer's work. It was for mine, because the subject matter is so much greater.

more quotes from Thom Gunn

There have been two popular subjects for poetry in the last few decades: the Vietnam War and AIDS, about both of which almost all of us have felt deeply.

more quotes from Thom Gunn

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, before we too into the dust descend.

more quotes from Omar Khayyám

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it.

more quotes from Omar Khayyám

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.

more quotes from Joyce Kilmer

I THINK that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth's flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

more quotes from Joyce Kilmer

Oh teach me to see death, and not to fear, But rather to take truce;...

more quotes from Henry King

You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

Be not affronted at a joke. If one throw salt at thee, thou wilt receive no harm, unless thou art raw.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

Every absurdity has a champion to defend it.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

It's a damned long, boggy, dirty, dangerous way.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

Where wealth accumulates, men decay.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

There is no arguing with Johnson; for when his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith

The very pink of perfection.

more quotes from Oliver Goldsmith