“Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.”

Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

We loved with a love that was more than love.

The true genius shudders at incompleteness – imperfection – and usually prefers silence to saying the something which is not everything that should be said.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on.

All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry.

The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.

We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many Colored Grass.

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind.

Mysteries force a man to think, and so injure his health.

Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see.

I intend to put up with nothing that I can put down.

Yet mad I am not and very surely do I not dream.

Imperceptibly the love of these discords grew upon me as my love of music grew stronger.

You should not overlook the guidelines of your culture. Life is short, and you don’t have time to figure everything out on your own. The wisdom of the past was hard-earned, and your dead ancestors may have something useful to tell you.

Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consultation for death.

Man dies constantly until the moment of his demise.

Despite all expectations, the time of my last campaign and of my passing is near. I wish to die at home. Let not my end disarm you, and on no account weep for me, lest the enemy be warned of my death.

With Heaven’s aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world. That task is left for you.

Death as the destruction of all things no longer had meaning when life was revealed to be a fatuous sequence of empty words, the hollow jingle of a jester’s cap and bells.

If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modern civilization and die from the effects of it.

The human will, that force unseen, The offspring of a deathless soul, Can hew a way to any goal, Though walls of granite intervene.