Poetry Quotes - We are the hollow men

 

Poetry Quotes - We are the hollow men 

“We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

 

Love arrives

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

 

We are weaned from our timidity

In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.”

― Maya Angelou

 

“A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

― Stephen Crane, War Is Kind and Other Poems

 

“We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

 

- The Hollow Men”

― T.S. Eliot, Poems: 1909-1925

 

“The monsters were never

under my bed.

Because the monsters

were inside my head.

 

 

I fear no monsters,

for no monsters I see.

Because all this time

the monster has been me.”

― Nikita Gill

 

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus; and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs, and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”

― William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

 

“The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.”

― Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love

 

“You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.

This is but half the truth.

You are also as strong as your strongest link.

To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean

by the frailty of its foam.

To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

 

“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.”

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

 

“We ran as if to meet the moon.”

― Robert Frost

 

“We are made of all those who have built and broken us.”

― Atticus Poetry, Love Her Wild

 

“There is no Frigate like a Book

To take us Lands away

Nor any Coursers like a Page

Of prancing Poetry –

This Traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of Toll –

How frugal is the Chariot

That bears a Human soul.”

― Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems

 

“Caged Bird

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind

and floats downstream till the current ends

and dips his wing in the orange suns rays and dares to claim the sky.

 

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage

can seldom see through his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

 

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hill

for the caged bird sings of freedom.

 

The free bird thinks of another breeze

and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn and he names the sky his own.

 

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.

 

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill

of things unknown but longed for still

and his tune is heard on the distant hill

for the caged bird sings of freedom.”

― Maya Angelou, The Complete Collected Poems

 

“You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye”

― Margaret Atwood

 

“The Poet With His Face In His Hands

You want to cry aloud for your

mistakes. But to tell the truth the world

doesn’t need anymore of that sound.

 

So if you’re going to do it and can’t

stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can’t

hold it in, at least go by yourself across

 

the forty fields and the forty dark inclines

of rocks and water to the place where

the falls are flinging out their white sheets

 

like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that

jubilation and water fun and you can

stand there, under it, and roar all you

 

want and nothing will be disturbed; you can

drip with despair all afternoon and still,

on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched

 

by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,

puffing out its spotted breast, will sing

of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything.”

― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2