“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.”

Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

Tell me not here, it needs not saying, What tune the enchantress plays In aftermaths of soft September Or under blanching mays, For she and I were long acquainted And I knew all her ways.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.

The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.

A moment’s thought would have shown him. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.

Three minutes thought would suffice to find this out; but thought is irksome and three minutes is a long time.

Give crowns and pounds and guineas But not your heart away; Give pearls away and rubies, But keep your fancy free.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair, and left my necktie God knows where. And carried half way home, or near, pints and quarts of Ludlow beer.

They say my verse is sad: no wonder; Its narrow measure spans Tears of eternity, and sorrow, Not mine. but man’s.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now Is hung with bloom along the bough.

The rainy Pleiads wester Orion plunges prone, And midnight strikes and hastens, And I lie down alone.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink for fellows whom it hurts to think.

There, by the starlit fences The wanderer halts and hears My soul that lingers sighing About the glimmering weirs.

Great literature should do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions.

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.