“At eighteen the heart shoots like a pebble from a slingshot
and the head doesn't sit on the shoulder.”

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

The Amulet of Samarkand (2003)

Atlas, on bearing the burden of maintaining the worlds, in Ch. 4
Space Chantey (1968)
Context: I tried to tell you, but words will not convey it. One has to be inside it to comprehend the magnitude. … It was the beginning. It's the only thing there is. But it was haphazard for so many aeons that it spooks me to think about it. There were always three or four maintaining it, but there was no one person strong enough to take it all over. "Somewhere there must be someone strong enough to take it all over," I said to myself in a direful moment, but the strongest person I could think of was myself. I've been doing it ever since. … By my attention I hold it all in being. Nothing exists unless it is perceived. If perception fails for a moment, then that thing fails forever. … I hate to be misjudged. They say that I bear it all on my shoulders, as though I were a stud or a balk. It's not on my great shoulders, it is amazing head on my great shoulders that maintains all.

Source: The Piper's Son

"Speech to Danish working-class actors on the art of observation" [Rede an dänische Arbeiterschauspieler über die Kunst der Beobachtung]] (1934), from The Messingkauf Poems, published in Versuche 14 (1955); trans. John Willett in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 235
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)

2010s, 2010
Context: Just because you in Washington and you who are so out of touch with life in the media, just because you don't believe in anything doesn't mean nobody else does. We do. You know why you're confused by this show? It's because I believe in something. You don't.
Tea parties believe in small government. We believe in returning to the principles of our founding fathers. We respect them, we revere them. Shoot me in the head before I stop talking about the founders. Shoot me in the head if you try to change our government — I will stand against you. And so will millions of others. We believe in something. You in the media and most in Washington don't. The radicals that you and Washington have co-opted and brought in wearing sheep's clothing — change the pose. You will get the ends. You've been using them? They believe in Communism. They believe and have called for revolutionar — a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning: they may shoot you.
They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind. And if they feel you have lied to them — they're revolutionaries. Nancy Pelosi, those are the people you should be worried about.
Here is my advice when you're dealing with people who believe in something that strongly — you take them seriously. You listen to their words and you believe that they will follow up with what they say.

Helen Waddell The Wandering Scholars (Harmondsworth: Penguin, [1927] 1954) pp. 77-78.
Criticism

A Birthday http://www.poetry-online.org/rossetti_christina_a_birthday.htm, st. 1 (1861).