“He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.”

Oh, ’tis jesting, dancing, drinking Spins the heavy world around.

Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.

They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat; They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.

Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.

Earth and high heaven are fixed of old and founded strong.

In every American there is an air of incorrigible innocence, which seems to conceal a diabolical cunning.

The thoughts of others were light and fleeting, Of lovers’ meeting Or luck or fame. Mine were of trouble, And mine were steady; So I was ready When trouble came.

Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die, No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault; It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.

Poetry is not the thing said, but the way of saying it.

With rue my heart is laden For golden friends I had, For many a rose-lipped maiden And many a lightfoot lad.

Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.

I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one.

I think that to transfuse emotion – not to transmit thought but to set up in the reader’s sense a vibration corresponding to what was felt by the writer – is the peculiar function of poetry.

Good religious poetry… is likely to be most justly appreciated and most discriminately relished by the undevout.

Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

White in the moon the long road lies.

A way of describing performances that I admire is that there is an absence of careerism. It’s a clumsy way of describing it but it sort of does it for me.

One could with equal justification talk about a Judeo-Islamic tradition or a Christian-Islamic tradition. These three religions are interlinked in many signification ways, which marks them off from the rest of the world.

Blind unbelief is sure to err, And scan his work in vain; God is his own interpreter, And he will make it plain.

The truth has a way of changing people’s plans.

I decided to write the book to open the eyes of the people of how corrupt John D. Rockefeller company was and the unfair ways he used to be successful.

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.

I’m set up where I make a lot of money doing stand-up, and it’s easy.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.