Sonnet Quotes - Page 3

• All the world's a stage, and all the men and women mearly players.

  William Shakespeare

  Friendship, Birthday, Men

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 2, sc. 7, l. 139

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• We are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game.

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Games, Curiosity, Usual

  Nobel Banquet Speech, www.nobelprize.org. December 10, 1969.

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• Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

  William Shakespeare

  Weed, Smell, Lilies

  Sonnet 94

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• And if God choose I shall but love thee better after death.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Desire Love, Headstone, Gravestone

  Sonnets from the Portuguese no. 43 (1850)

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• One man in his time plays many parts.

  William Shakespeare

  Birthday, Character, Men

  'As You Like It' (1599) act 2, sc. 7, l. 139

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• Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Night, Greatness, Born Leaders

  "Book of Humorous Quotations" by Connie Robertson, (p. 29), 1998.

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• Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Art, Expression

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.164, GENERAL PRESS

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• Shakespeare, of course, makes us ever aware of transience, not only in the sonnets, but also powerfully in his plays - spectacles for a brief period of time and then gone, as when Prospero describes the pageant fading, leaving "not a rack behind."

  Martha Ronk

  Play, Leaving, Gone

  Source: www.raintaxi.com

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• I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy. "Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

  Jane Austen

  Strong, Healthy, May

  Jane Austen (1946). “PRIDE AND PREJUDICE”, p.30, PDFreeBooks.org

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• I did some research on this a couple years ago," Augustus continued. "I was wondering if everybody could be remembered. Like, if we got organized, and assigned a certain number of corpses to each living person, would there be enough living people to remember all the dead people?" "And are there?" "Sure, anyone can name fourteen dead people. But we're disorganized mourners, so a lot of people end up remembering Shakespeare and no one ends up remembering the person he wrote Sonnet Fifty-five about

  John Green

  Couple, Years, Names

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.103, Penguin UK

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• Sonnet XXV Before I loved you, love, nothing was my own: I wavered through the streets, among Objects: Nothing mattered or had a name: The world was made of air, which waited. I knew rooms full of ashes, Tunnels where the moon lived, Rough warehouses that growled 'get lost', Questions that insisted in the sand. Everything was empty, dead, mute, Fallen abandoned, and decayed: Inconceivably alien, it all Belonged to someone else - to no one: Till your beauty and your poverty Filled the autumn plentiful with gifts.

  Pablo Neruda

  Autumn, Moon, Tunnels

  Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XXV”

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• Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit

  Madeleine L'Engle

  Writing, Form, Given

  FaceBook post by Madeleine L'Engle from Apr 23, 2016

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• Everything. A letter may be coded, and a word may be coded. A theatrical performance may be coded, and a sonnet may be coded, and there are times when it seems the entire world is in code. Some believe that the world can be decoded by performing research in a library. Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper. In my case, the only thing that made sense of the world was you, and without you the world will seem as garbled and tragic as a malfunctioning typewrit9.

  Daniel Handler

  Reading, Believe, Library

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• When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death: "Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said. . . yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead. . . -Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair: "Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there". . . So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were Beauty for an afternoon.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Wise, Art, Eye

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “This Side of Paradise”, p.184, Xist Publishing

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• My colleagues in elementary particle theory in many lands [and I] are driven by the usual insatiable curiosity of the scientist, and our work is a delightful game. I am frequently astonished that it so often results in correct predictions of experimental results. How can it be that writing down a few simple and elegant formulae, like short poems governed by strict rules such as those of the sonnet or the waka, can predict universal regularities of Nature?

  Murray Gell-Mann

  Nature, Hard Work, Writing

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• Even now, Dickon was upstairs, writing sonnets to his new love, while back at Seadown House, Marianne was writing 'Ella' on scraps of paper and then burning them.

  Jessica Day George

  Writing, House, Burning

  Jessica Day George (2010). “Princess of Glass”, p.145, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• You must know that I do not love and that I love you, because everything alive has its two sides; a word is one wing of silence, fire has its cold half. I love you in order to begin to love you, to start infinity again and never to stop loving you: that’s why I do not love you yet. I love you, and I do not love you, as if I held keys in my hand: to a future of joy- a wretched, muddled fate- My love has two lives, in order to love you. -Sonnet XLIV

  Pablo Neruda

  Love You, Fate, Fire

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• Requiescat Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life’s buried here, Heap earth upon it.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lying, Heart, White

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Poems and poems in prose”, p.5, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Whoever you are, bear in mind that appearance is not reality. Some people act like extroverts, but the effort costs them energy, authenticity, and even physical health. Others seem aloof or self-contained, but their inner landscapes are rich and full of drama. So the next time you see a person with a composed face and a soft voice, remember that inside her mind she might be solving an equation, composing a sonnet, designing a hat. She might, that is, be deploying the powers of quiet.

  Susan Cain

  Drama, Reality, Self

  Susan Cain (2012). “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking”, p.266, Broadway Books

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• I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them. Now that I have declared the foundations of my love, I surrender this century to you: wooden sonnets that rise only because you gave them life.

  Pablo Neruda

  Eye, House, Boards

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• No longer mourn for me when I am dead than you shall hear the surly sullen bell give warning to the world that I am fled from this vile world with vilest worms to dwell: nay, if you read this line, remember not the hand that writ it, for I love you so, that I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot, if thinking on me then should make you woe. O! if, I say, you look upon this verse when I perhaps compounded am with clay, do not so much as my poor name rehearse; but let your love even with my life decay; lest the wise world should look into your moan, and mock you with me after I am gone.

  William Shakespeare

  Wise, Sweet, Love You

  Sonnet 71

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• To me there's no creativity without boundaries. If you're gonna write a sonnet, it's 14 lines, so it's solving the problem within the container.

  Lorne Michaels

  Writing, Creativity, Lines

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• Dancing, is, for the most part, attended with many amorous smiles, wanton compliments, unchaste kisses, scurrilous songs and sonnets, effeminate music, lust provoking attire, ridiculous love pranks, all which savor only of sensuality, of raging fleshly lusts. Therefore, it is wholly to be abandoned of all good Christians.

  William Prynne

  Christian, Song, Kissing

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• What is it about a secret love that makes everything they do shine, everything they say sound like a sonnet and every expression they make perfect, when to everyone else you speak to they're quite ordinary. It's a cruel sort of thing.

  Stefanie Schneider

  Expression, Perfect, Secret Love

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• We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs and hearse Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; And if no peace of chronicle we prove, We'll build in sonnet pretty rooms; As well a well wrought urne becomes The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.

  John Donne

  Love, Peace, Ashes

  John Donne (1996). “Selected Poetry”, p.88, Oxford University Press, USA

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