Madeleine Barnes > Madeleine's Quotes

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”
― Dylan Thomas

“Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become a part of the edge and thus a part of the boundary, the definition which gives the whole its shape?”
― Lucy Grealy

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.”
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“This place has only three exits, sir: Madness, and Death.”
― Rene Daumal, A Night of Serious Drinking

“May night continue to fall upon the orchestra”
― Andre Breton

“I am born for the second time,
happiness of the world
came to me again.
My body effervescences,
I think with my body which effervesces.

If I wish
I will soar.”
― Anna Świrszczyńska, Talking to My Body

“There is no faith and no hope
without sleep.”
― H.D.

“A poet should be as sensitive as an aching tooth.”
― Anna Świrszczyńska

“Sad Lovers

Like an eye and an eyelid
United by a tear”
― Anna Świrszczyńska

“Before my mother's death, I sat anywhere. Now I look for the image of the empty chair near the image of the empty table. An image of me sits down. Depression is a glove over the heart. Depression is an image of a glove over the image of a heart.”
― Victoria Chang, Obit

“I now know that to be loved as child means to be watched. In high school, I loved when the teacher turned the lights off. A moment to feel loved and unseen at once. I understand now. We can't be loved when the lights are off.”
― Victoria Chang, Obit

“If you cut out a rectangle of a perfectly blue sky, no clouds, no wind, no birds, frame it with a blue frame, place it faceup on the floor of an empty museum with an open atrium to the sky, that is grief.”
― Victoria Chang, Obit

“It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“When seeking guidance, don't ever listen to the tiny-hearted. Be kind to them, heap them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“Though her soul requires seeing, the culture around her requires sightlessness. Though her soul wishes to speak its truth, she is pressured to be silent.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“It makes utter sense to stay healthy and strong, to be as nourishing to the body as possible. Yet I would have to agree, there is in many women a 'hungry' one inside. But rather than hungry to be a certain size, shape, or height, rather than hungry to fit the stereotype; women are hungry for basic regard from the culture surrounding them. The 'hungry' one inside is longing to be treated respectfully, to be accepted and in the very least, to be met without stereotyping.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on.”
― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

“Death is an ascension to a better library. ”
― John Donne

“Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,
Yet, when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run ;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.”
― John Donne

“Sir, more than kisses,
letters mingle souls;
For, thus friends absent speak.”
― John Donne

“I am a little world made cunningly.”
― John Donne

“In Heaven, it is always Autumn".”
― John Donne

“Grief brought to numbers cannot be so fierce,
For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.”
― John Donne, Alchimie der Liebe. Gedichte, zweisprachig

“Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. The question of what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated. If one feels that there is nothing 'we' can do -- but who is that 'we'? -- and nothing 'they' can do either -- and who are 'they' -- then one starts to get bored, cynical, apathetic.”
― Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

“Citizens of modernity, consumers of violence as spectacle, adepts of proximity without risk, are schooled to be cynical about the possibility of sincerity. Some people will do anything to keep themselves from being moved.”
― Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others

“Desire, desire which knows, we draw no advantage from our shadows except from some veritable sovereignties accompanied by invisible flames, invisible chains, which, coming to light, step after step, cause us to shine.”
― René Char, Selected Poems

“Companions in pathos,who barely murmur,go with your lamp spent and return the jewels. A new mystery sings in your bones. Cultivate your legitimate strangeness.”
― René Char

“In the streets of the town goes my love. Small matter where
she moves in divided time. She is no longer my love, anyone may speak with her. She remembers no longer: who exactly loved her?
She seeks her equal in glances, pledging. The space she traverses
is my faithfulness. She traces a hope and lightly dismisses it.
She is dominant without taking part.
I live in her depth, a joyous shipwreck. Without her knowing,
my solitude is her treasure. In the great meridian where her soaring
is inscribed, my freedom delves deep in her.
In the streets of the town goes my love. Small matter where
she moves in divided time. She is no longer my love, anyone may
speak with her. She remembers no longer: who exactly loved her,
and lights her from afar, lest she should fall?

from ”Fidelity”
― René Char, Fureur et Mystère

“Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.”
― John Keats