when General Eisenhower defined an intellectual as "a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows", he was speaking not as a Republican but as an American.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

The ways we miss our lives are life.

The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

Read at whim! Read at whim!

We can't tell our life from our wish

It is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

Except from the Americans—but every pearl has its oyster.

May success knock your door always

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.

The true meaning of the precepts is that one should refrain not only from drinking alcohol but also from getting drunk on nirvana.

In order to understand, I destroyed myself.

It is your concern when your neighbor's wall is on fire.

Nailing him was like trying to thread a needle in a high wind.

The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it.

Beauty! thou pretty plaything! dear deceit, That steals so softly o'er the stripling's heart, And gives it a new pulse unknown before!

If you spend all your time worrying about dying, living isn't going to be much fun.

Ideas by themselves are not worth anything, only executing well is what creates value.