quotes from classic

Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horse pond.

more quotes from Thomas Love Peacock

Nothing can be more obvious than that all animals were created solely and exclusively for the use of man.

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A book that furnishes no quotations is no book -- it is a plaything.

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Madam, Life's a piece in bloom death goes dogging everywhere: She's the tenant of the room he's the ruffian on the stair.

more quotes from William Ernest Henley

I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.

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In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud: Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.

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It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll; I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

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Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage;...

more quotes from Richard Lovelace

If I have freedom in my love, And in my soul am free, -- Angels alone that soar above, Enjoy such liberty.

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There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

more quotes from Anthony Evan Hecht

It doesn't seem to me strange that children should like the macabre, the sensational, and the forbidden.

more quotes from Anthony Evan Hecht

Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew.

more quotes from Anthony Evan Hecht

Mandelstam's wife committed all his poems to memory in fear that both he and his poems would be destroyed by Stalin.

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Children know from a remarkably early age that things are being kept from them, that grown-ups participate in a world of mysteries.

more quotes from Anthony Evan Hecht

These questions absorbed me at an age when I was supposed to be getting down the rudimentary facts of American history, which I carelessly neglected.

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A lot of the fun lies in trying to penetrate the mystery; and this is best done by saying over the lines to yourself again and again, till they pass through the stage of sounding like nonsense, and finally return to a full sense that had at first escaped notice.

more quotes from Anthony Evan Hecht

Mysteries, like the Masonic rites, are ones parents and elders are sworn not to reveal to the uninitiated, which include all children. And so we sought for signs.

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I had a vision of my body in mid-Atlantic, hanging unsupported just about three feet above the white caps, looking as if you could pass steel hoops along it from end to end by way of demonstrating that there were no wires or hidden brackets to keep it aloft.

more quotes from Anthony Evan Hecht

Is that the wind dying? O no; It's only two devils, that blow Through a murderer's bones, to and fro, In the ghosts' moonshine.

more quotes from Thomas Lovell Beddoes

We are afraid They would envy our delight, In our graves by glow-worm night.

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