Rainer Maria Rilke (December 04, 1875 – December 29, 1926) Again and again in history some people wake up. They have no ground in the crowd and they move to broader, deeper laws. They carry strange customs with them and demand room for bold and audacious action. The future speaks ruthlessly through them. They change …
Pablo Picasso On Art
Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 - April 08, 1973) A painting is not thought out and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it's finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.
Philip Larkin On Jazz
Philip Larkin (August 09, 1922 – December 02, 1985) Jazz is a parallel case in poetry; one's enthusiasm starts in one's adolescence and never seems to flag. In many ways I prefer it to poetry. I listen to it while dressing in the morning, turning to it in a way I should turn to poetry …
Maria Popova On Speaking And Listening
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) Every act of communication is an act of tremendous courage in which we give ourselves over to two parallel possibilities: the possibility of planting into another mind a seed sprouted in ours and watching it blossom into a breathtaking flower of mutual understanding; and the possibility of being wholly …
Mark Strand On When The Vacation Is Over For Good
Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 - November 29, 2014) It will be strange Knowing at last it couldn’t go on forever, The certain voice telling us over and over That nothing would change, And remembering too, Because by then it will all be done with, the way Things were, and how we had wasted time …
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James Baldwin On Responsibility
James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) A great deal of what I say just leaves me open, I suppose, to a vast amount of misunderstanding. A great deal of what I say is based on an assumption which I hold and don’t always state. You know my fury about people is based …
Robert M Pirsig On Buddha
Robert M Pirsig (September 6, 1928 – April 24, 2017) The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.
Mariam Makebe On Racism
Miriam Makeba (March 04, 1932 – November 09, 2008) I look at an ant and I see myself: a native South African, endowed by nature with a strength much greater than my size so I might cope with the weight of a racism that crushes my spirit.
Richard Ford On Trust
Richard Ford (February 16, 1944 -) I know for a fact I’ve never been much on trust – which seems from most sources to be a major friendship component. I don’t like trusting people, and almost never do it. And I’m uncomfortable when people want to place trust in me, and almost always discourage it. …
Milan Kundera On Life
Milan Kundera (April 01, 1929 -) We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.
David H. Souter On Parody
Justice David H. Souter (September 17, 1939 -) Like less ostensibly humorous forms of criticism, [parody] can provide social benefit by shedding light on an earlier work and, in the process, creating a new one.
Robert Grudin On Courage
Robert Grudin (1938 -) To be attentive to new messages, to shift them for validity and mercilessly reject the invalid, and to follow good ideas in spite of their forbidding strangeness all take a kind of courage. And this courage, once internalized, is often projected into the innovator’s relations with the world at large.
Billy Collins On “I Love You”
Billy Collins (March 22, 1941 -) Early on, I noticed that you always say it to each of your children as you are getting off the phone with them just as you never fail to say it to me whenever we arrive at the end of a call. It’s all new to this only child. …
Yusef Komunyakaa On Poetry
Yusef Komunyakaa (April 29, 1941 -) Attempt to write every day, to read everything, to listen, to be in the world, to challenge ideas and to question ourselves. Because it’s not just poetry; it’s the experience of inquiry… Be aware of the small things in the world, not necessarily the monumental things. The small things …
Tao Writer On Stand Undiminished
Tao Writer (April 17, 1948 -) It means every element of your being has the power, the permission, the blessings of the blessed, to seek and befriend on every path, road, mountain passage, or astral plane the limitless aspects of you. It means to be and to accept all that you are and are not …
Dwight D. Eisenhower On The Military Industrial Complex
President Dwight D. Eisenhower (October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination …
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Martin Luther King on Non-Violence
Martin L. King (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) I think though that we can be sure that the vast majority of Negroes who engage in the demonstrations and who understand the nonviolent philosophy will be able to face dogs and all of the other brutal methods that are used without retaliating with violence, …
Wisława Szymborska On Inspiration
Wisława Szymborska (July 2, 1923–February 1, 2012) It’s not that they’ve never known the blessing of this inner impulse. It’s just not easy to explain something to someone else that you don’t understand yourself…Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists generally. There is, has been, and will always be a certain group …
Susan Faludi On Feminism
Susan Faludi (April 18, 1959 -) I don't see how you can be a feminist and not think about men. In order for women to live freely, men have to live freely, too. Being a feminist opens your eyes to the ways men, like women, are imprisoned in cultural stereotypes.
Léo Dangel On Memoriam
Leo Dangel (1941 - 2016) In the early afternoon my mother was doing the dishes. I climbed onto the kitchen table, I suppose to play, and fell asleep there. I was drowsy and awake, though, as she lifted me up, carried me on her arms into the living room, and placed me on the davenport, …
Erich Fromm On Understanding
Erich Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself…Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door …
Elizabeth Alexander On Art
Elizabeth Alexander (May 30, 1962 -) Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other’s lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth.
Barbara Ras On You Can’t Have It All
Barbara Ras (1949 -) But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back. You can have the purr of the cat and the …
Marie Corelli On Soul Mates
Marie Corelli (May 01, 1855 – April 21, 1924) Now realize that there is no soul on this earth that is complete, alone. Like everything else, it is dual. It is like half a flame that seeks the other half, and is dissatisfied and restless till it attains its object. Lovers, misled by the blinding light …
Nayib Bukele On Migration
Nayib Bukele President of El Salvador (July 24, 1981 -) It is our fault... I think migration is a right, but it should be an option, not an obligation. And right now it's an obligation for a lot of people… Why? Because they don't have a job, because they are being threatened by gangs, because …
Michael Champlin On Creative Space
Michael Champlin Creative space isn’t about putting up walls or hiding from the outside world, nor is it a simple desire to be away from people. Creative space is about finding solace and silence in the external world, so that we may adequately listen to our own minds. This can mean different things to different …
Jami Attenberg On Love
Jami Attenberg (1971 -) For me, the best way to get to know a city is the same as with a human being: learn both the flaws and the charms. I cannot fully love something until I know both.
John Muir On Travel
John Muir (April 21, 1838 – December 24, 1914) I wandered away on a glorious botanical and geological excursion, which has lasted nearly 50 years and is not yet completed, always happy and free, poor and rich, without thought of a diploma or of making a name.
Josef Pieper On Music
Josef Pieper (May 4, 1904–November 6, 1997) Music opens a path into the realm of silence. Music reveals the human soul in stark “nakedness,” as it were, without the customary linguistic draperies.
Virginia Esther Hamilton On Want
Virginia Esther Hamilton (March 12, 1936 – February 19, 2002) There are three things I can remember always wanting: to go to New York, to go to Spain, and to be a writer. It feels nice to have done all three. I haven’t had to want anything for some time.
Nina Bogin On Initiation
Nina Bogin (January 02, 1954 -) At the crossroads, hens scratched circles into the white dust. There was a shop where I bought coffee and eggs, coarse-grained chocolate almost too sweet to eat. When I walked up the road, the string sack heavy on my arm, I thought that my legs could take me anywhere, …
