Poetic Quotes - Page 13

• Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Men, Live By, Employment

  Oliver Goldsmith (1856). “The Miscellaneous Works: Poems. Miscellaneous pieces. Dramas. Criticism relating to poetry and the belles-lettres”, p.134

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• My suggestion is that at each state the proper order of operation of the mind requires an overall grasp of what is generally known, not only in formal logical, mathematical terms, but also intuitively, in images, feelings, poetic usage of language, etc.

  David Bohm

  Order, Feelings, Mind

  "Wholeness and the Implicate Order". Book by David Bohm, 1980.

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• For a long time, early industrializing countries were absorptive. They were endlessly able to absorb new labor inputs to keep expanding. This was both an economics and a worldview. Here in the United States, we have the Statue of Liberty sitting in the harbor in New York, which says in huge letters, We stand for absorptive capital. A poetic version: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses." But what it means is, Come here, we'll absorb you. We absorb these inputs and add them to our growing economy, and we manage this with liberal democracy.

  Joshua Clover

  Country, Tired, Mean

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• This gown, is it cut from shadow?" the general asked. "I can barely feel it between my fingers." Not for want of trying, thought Madrigal. "Perhaps it is a reflection of the night sky," he suggested, "skimmed from a pond?" She supposed that he was being poetic. erotic, even. In return, as unerotically as possible- more like complaining of a stain that wouldn't come out-she said, "Yes, my lord. I went for a dip, and the reflection clung.

  Laini Taylor

  Cutting, Reflection, Night

  Laini Taylor (2015). “The Complete Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy”, p.294, Hachette UK

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• A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies that have moulded them

  Jawaharlal Nehru

  Race, Culture, Genius

  Jawaharlal Nehru (1980). “An Anthology”

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• Then what's a synonym for woman?" "Entrails." "You're not very poetic, are you? Well, then, what's the antonym for entrails?" "Milk.

  Osamu Dazai

  Milk, Wells, Synonym

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.143, New Directions Publishing

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• French is the most beautiful,” he said, “and Italian is the most poetic, and Russian the most powerful, German the most solid. But more business is done in English than in any other.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Beautiful, Powerful, Italian

  Pearl S. Buck (2012). “Pavilion of Women: A Novel of Life in the Women's Quarters”, p.175, Open Road Media

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• So you got rid of your astonishment that someone could write so much more dynamically than you. You stopped cherishing your aloneness and poetic differentness to your delicately flat little bosom. You said: she's to good to forget. How about making her a friend and competitor — you could learn alot from her. So you'll try. So maybe she'll laugh in your face. So maybe she'll beat you hollow in the end. So anyhow, you'll try, and maybe, possibly, she can stand you. Here's hoping!

  Sylvia Plath

  Writing, Laughing, Trying

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• The study of sickness is the most poetic of the sciences.

  Thomas Bernhard

  Study, Sickness

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• At first I protested and rebelled against poetry. I was about to deny my poetic worlds. I was doing violence to my illusions with analysis, science, and learning Henry’s language, entering Henry’s world. I wanted to destroy by violence and animalism my tenuous fantasies and illusions and my hypersensitivity. A kind of suicide. The ignominy awakened me. Then June came and answered the cravings of my imagination and saved me. Or perhaps she killed me, for now I am started on a course of madness.

  Anais Nin

  Suicide, June, Imagination

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• Now that’s true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.

  Franny Billingsley

  Names, Rose, Battle

  Franny Billingsley (2013). “Chime”, p.105, A&C Black

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• I think I summed up my attitude to philosophy when I said: philosophy ought really to be written only as a poetic composition.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Attitude, Philosophy, Thinking

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• Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.

  Terry Pratchett

  Wind, Desire, Ships

  Terry Pratchett (2012). “The Wit and Wisdom of Discworld”, p.17, Harper Collins

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• Today not even a universal fire could make the torrential poetic production of our time disappear. But it is exactly a question of production, that is, of hand-made products which are subject to the laws of taste and fashion.

  Eugenio Montale

  Fashion, Fire, Hands

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• Homeopathy seemed . . . both mathematical and poetic.

  Scarlett Thomas

  Mathematical, Homeopathy

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• You are ugly when you love her, you are beautiful and fresh, vital and free, modern and poetic when you don't... you are more beautiful as an orphan than as your mother's son.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Beautiful, Mother, Son

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• There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depends heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.

  Paul Lockhart

  Art, Expression, Long

  "A Mathematician’s Lament". genius.com. January 1, 2002.

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• America was based on a poetic vision. What will happen when it loses its poetry?

  Azar Nafisi

  America, Poetic License, Vision

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• Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.

  Aime Cesaire

  Silence, Born, Scientific Knowledge

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• Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

  Novalis

  Genius, Moral, Active

  Novalis (1997). “Novalis: Philosophical Writings”, p.57, SUNY Press

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• Shadow boxes become poetic theater or settings wherein are metamorphosed the elements of a childhood pastime. The fragile, shimmering globules become the shimmering but more enduring planets—a connotation of moon and tides—the association of water less subtle, as when driftwood pieces make up a proscenium to set off the dazzling white of sea foam and billowy cloud crystallized in a pipe of fancy.

  Joseph Cornell

  Moon, Sea, White

  Joseph Cornell, Pasadena Art Museum (1967*). “An exhibition of works”

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• The New York book was a visual diary and it was also kind of personal newspaper. I wanted it to look like the news. I didn’t relate to European photography. It was too poetic and anecdotal for me… the kinetic quality of new york, the kids, dirt, madness—I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I would be grainy and contrasted and black. Id crop, blur, play with the negatives. I didn’t see clean technique being right for New York. I could imagine my pictures lying in the gutter like the New York Daily News.

  William Klein

  Photography, New York, Lying

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• Man's first expression, like his first dream, was an aesthetic one. Speech was a poetic outcry rather than a demand for communication. Original man, shouting his consonants, did so in yells of awe and anger at his tragic state, at his own self-awareness and at his own helplessness before the void.

  Barnett Newman

  Dream, Communication, Men

  Barnett Newman, John Philip O'Neill (1992). “Barnett Newman: Selected Writings and Interviews”, p.158, Univ of California Press

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• What I wish I had, is that I wish I was a little more Greek, in that I wish I could lose my North American driven attitude and that I could be a little bit more poetic and laissez faire.

  Nia Vardalos

  Attitude, Greek, Wish

  "TriBeCa Interview: My Life In Ruins with Nia Vardalos". Interview with Matthew-Lee Erlbach, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 4, 2009.

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• My subject matter was a genuine sort of experience that came out of my life, particularly the American world in which I was privileged to be . . . . I would really think of the bakery counters, of the way the counter was lit, where the pies were placed, but I wanted just a piece of the experience. From when I worked in restaurants . . . [it was] always poetic to me.

  Wayne Thiebaud

  Thinking, Pie, World

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