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Quotes by Poet

"A lantern can give you light only when you light it."

"So bashful when I spied her!So pretty - so ashamed!So hidden in her leafletsLest anybody find -So breathless till I passed her -So helpless when I turnedAnd bore her struggling, blushing,Her simple haunts beyond!For whom I robbed the Dingle -For whom betrayed the Dell -Many, will doubtless ask me,But I shall never tell!"

"The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie."

"I measure every Grief I meetWith narrow, probing, Eyes;I wonder if It weighs like Mine,Or has an Easier size."

"A modern civilization is only possible when it is accepted that singular beings exist and express themselves freely."

"The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South."

"It's like breathing in and out to me. It's like having a conversation with someone who isn't there. Because it has to be addressed to somebody - not a particular person, or very rarely."

"We understand and recognize what is good, but we do not labor to bring it to fulfillment, some of us out of laziness, some because we put something else, some pleasure, before virtue--and there are many pleasures in life, long conversations and indolence-that pleasing vice.."

"Did he who made the lamb make thee?"

"I will say nothing... against the course of my existence. But at bottom it has been nothing but pain and burden, and I can affirm that during the whole of my 75 years, I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being. It is but the perpetual rolling of a rock that must be raised up again forever."

"I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me."

"Behavior is what a man does, not what he thinks, feels, or believes."

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always To be Blest."

"There was the Door to which I found no key; There was the Veil through which I might see."

"But the perception of life as an organic unity is a slow achievement, and depends for its growth on a people's entry into the main current of world-events."

"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."

"I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry - writing at writing."

"I love life in spite of all that mars it. I love friendship, jokes and laughter."

"Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature."

"I foresee that man will resign himself each day to new abominations, and soon that only bandits and soldiers will be left."

"It is ever true that he who does nothing for others, does nothing for himself."

"I guess there is also an element of deliberate change involved. Each of my books has been, at least from my point of view, radically different from the last."
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