Wisdom

Literature is the one place in any society where, within the secrecy of our own heads, we can hear voices talking about everything in every possible way.

For words be blurred, hushed up in clattering din. Our thoughts profound are blank, or bray like asses.

Men seek but music's sound; the thought is dumb.

Age becomes no man, nor rank, neither riches; injustice lies in foul guilt alone.

The folly of men can ever be known in this, that they forget death, which cometh a-pace, and they remember not their latter end.

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

The search for truth is in one way hard and in another way easy, for it is evident that no one can master it fully or miss it wholly.

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition.

Most people don't know how to listen because the major part of the world is still. If you can hold still, then you can hear things that you don't ordinarily hear.

The problems of the world are always a mind problem.

Poetry is a serious game played well.

Imagination and wisdom are synonymous.

The old masters call to me and say, 'Don't stop. Work hard.'

The essence of the world is never revealed by an image.

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.

I have too many thoughts and feeling and memories. When I try to put them into words, they seem trite.

Words are so distinctly human.

My writing tries to reach the edge of the unknown.

In poetry I look for what is most primal in me.

As a wise man once said, 'A society gets the criminals it deserves.'