quotes from classic

In life, there are no perfect affections.

more quotes from James Merrill

But those two plays left me on fresh terms with language. I didn't always have to speak in my own voice.

more quotes from James Merrill

Oh, I picked up a two-volume Guide to Science by Asimov - very useful, still, each time I forget how the carbon atom is put together, or need to shake my head over elemental tables.

more quotes from James Merrill

Strange about parents. We have such easy access to them and such daunting problems of communication.

more quotes from James Merrill

Arthur Young's Reflexive Universe - fascinating but too schematic to fit into my scheme. The most I could hope for was a sense of the vocabulary and some possible images.

more quotes from James Merrill

Chiefly, I think, the - to me - unprecedented way in which the material came. Not through flashes of insight, wordplay, trains of thought. More like what a friend, or stranger, might say over a telephone.

more quotes from James Merrill

And, as I have said, it's made me think twice about the imagination. If the spirits aren't external, how astonishing the mediums become! Victor Hugo said of his voices that they were like his own mental powers multiplied by five.

more quotes from James Merrill

I'd like to think the scientists need us - but do they? Did Newton need Blake?

more quotes from James Merrill

Because of its length and looniness I'd taken to calling it the Divine Comedy - not of course a usable title, until David Jackson thought of making it plural. Dante, subtler as always, let posterity affix the adjective.

more quotes from James Merrill

Knowing some Greek helped defuse forbidding words - not that I counted much on using them. You'll find only trace elements of this language in the poem.

more quotes from James Merrill

He puts his right hand lightly on the cup, I put my left, leaving the right free to transcribe, and away we go. We get, oh, 500 to 600 words an hour. Better than gasoline.

more quotes from James Merrill

Before trying a novel I wrote a couple of plays.

more quotes from James Merrill

Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face In agonies of speech on speechless panes?...

more quotes from Kenneth Slessor

Where have you gone? The tide is over you, The turn of midnight water's over you,...

more quotes from Kenneth Slessor

These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.

more quotes from Kenneth Slessor

Go to the ant, thou sluggard, learn to live, and by her busy ways, reform thine own.

more quotes from Christopher Smart

Do not speak quickly; it is a sign of insanity.

more quotes from Tobias Smollett

The wise man carries his possessions within him.

more quotes from Tobias Smollett

Make wisdom your provision for the journey from youth to old age, for it is a more certain support than all other possessions.

more quotes from Tobias Smollett

The thing that is incredible is life itself. Why should we be here in this sun-illuminated universe? Why should there be green earth under our feet?

more quotes from Edwin Markham