Quotes about verse
page 4

“Read Homer once, and you can read no more;
For all books else appear so mean, so poor,
Verse will seem prose; but still persist to read,
And Homer will be all the books you need.”

John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby (1648–1721) English poet and notable Tory politician of the late Stuart period

Essay on Poetry (published 1723).

Books, Appearance, Reading

“My objection to metre is that it enables people to write verse with no poetic inspiration.”

T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic

Lecture on Modern Poetry (1914)

People

“The ideal system engineer is an engineer thoroughly versed in his field but conversant with and knowledgeable of other fields. You have to have the capability and desire to become a 'six-month expert'… You've got to want to become a generalist, too.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

Source: Mathematicians are useful (1971), p. 1

Knowledge

“Petal, like a persistent song phrase, like a few stubborn lines of verse memorized in childhood. The needle was stuck.”

Annie Proulx book The Shipping News

Source: The Shipping News (1993), P. 53

Childhood

“I rely on two precedents: first, to similar cases our Sages applied the verse, "It is time to do something in honour of the Lord: for they have made void thy law"… Secondly, they have said, "Let all thy acts be guided by pure intentions."… Lastly, when I have a difficult subject before me—when I find the road narrow, and can see no other way of teaching a well established truth except by pleasing one intelligent man and displeasing ten thousand fools—I prefer to address myself to the one man, and to take no notice whatever of the condemnation of the multitude; I prefer to extricate that intelligent man from his embarrassment and show him the cause of his perplexity, so that he may attain perfection and be at peace.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Introduction

Truth, Peace, Law, Fools

“Neither in prose nor verse we aught can say,
But some one said it long before our day.”

Francesco Berni (1497–1535) Italian poet

LIX, 1
Rifacimento of Orlando Innamorato

“You cannot deliver value unless you anchor the company's values. Values make an unsinkable ship." Code of conduct goes beyond legal compliance and every employee needs to be well versed with it.”

Indra Nooyi (1955) Indian-born, naturalized American, business executive

Quoted in "Fundamentals of India are strong: Indra Nooyi".

“The preceding verse explained that together the three factors: 1) the knowledge (jnanam), 2) the known (jneyam), and 3) the knower (parijnata) motivate action. It was also stated that the organ (karanam), the action (karma), and the agent (karta) execute the action. In this verse the threefold distinction of knowledge, action, and the actor is explain according to the three gunas of Samkhya philosophy.”

Baba Hari Dass (1923–2018) master yogi, author, builder, commentator of Indian spiritual tradition

Srimad Bhagavad Gita, Ch. XIII-XVIII, 2015

Motivation, Knowledge

“The practice of reading aloud did do something towards attuning my ear. The subtle cadences of Elizabethan blank verse taught me more than the substantial study of English prosody could do at that time.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Drums of Morning, 1992

Study, Time, Reading

“Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος". This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts, σὺν λόγω, with logos. Logos means both reason and word - a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2006, Faith, Reason and the University — Memories and Reflections (2006)

God, Books, Faith, Communication

“On the Day of Resurrection when He Whom God will make manifest cometh unto you, invested with conclusive proofs, ye shall hold His Cause as being devoid of truth, whereas God hath apprised you in the Bayán that no similarity existeth between the Cause of Him Whom God will make manifest and the cause of others. How can anyone besides God reveal a verse such as to overwhelm all mankind? Say, great is God! Who else but Him Whom God will make manifest can spontaneously recite verses which proceed from His Lord — a feat that no mortal man can ever hope to accomplish?”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVIII, 3
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God, Truth, Hope

“There be three speciall notes necessary to be obserued in the framing of our accustomed English Ryme. The first is, that one meeter or verse be aunswerable to an other, in equall number of feete or syllables, or proportionable to the tune whereby it is to be reade or measured. The seconde, to place the words in such sorte as none of them be wrested contrary to the naturall inclination or affectation of the same, or more truely the true quantity thereof. The thyrd, to make them fall together mutually in Ryme, that is, in wordes of like sounde, but so as the wordes be not disordered for the Rymes sake, nor the sence hindered.”

William Webbe

Discourse of English Poetrie http://www.bartleby.com/209/161.html, 1871 [1586], pp. 57–8.

Reading

“Mantua, the home of the Muses, raised to the skies by immortal verse, and a match for the lyre of Homer.”
Mantua, Musarum domus atque ad sidera cantu evecta Aonio et Smyrnaeis aemula plectris.

Silius Italicus Punica

Book VIII, lines 593–594
Punica

Home

“Composed for renown am I, a verse heard
on the stone-doored isle in the four-quartered fort.
Tranquillity and obscurity mingled
shiny wine their drink before their retinue.
Three fulnesses of Prydwen we went upon the main,
Save for seven none came up from Castle Rigor.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Annwn

Drink, Wine

“The history of English poetry in verse in the story of the exhaustion of the effects to be obtained from rhyme and meter of the exploitation of a mine in which the most lodes have at last given out.”

F. S. Flint (1885–1960) English Imagist poet

Otherworld Cadences (1920)

History

“My beloved brothers and sisters. On the globe, several incidents have occurred that make it necessary for us to speak about them, and guide the Muslims in their regard… It's important for us to know that as Muslims, we don't understand what part of Islam these people [terrorists] are following. In fact, we don't even understand what Islam they are following, because Islam is a totally different religion from what these people are practicing… As frustrated as we might be because of what might be happening on Muslim lands, it does not give us the right to go out and hurt people who are not at all involved… If you have a problem with someone, you may report them to the authorities. And then it will handled by the courts. You will either get justice at the courts or sometimes maybe the courts may find someone that you believe is guilty, innocent. In that case, you leave it for the day of judgment, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala will be judge. But you do not take it into your own hands, to say now because the court has found this person innocent, and according to me the person is guilty, "Let me harm them, let me kill them, let me hurt them, let me rob from them". That is absolutely incorrect and it is un-Islamic… Two wrongs do not make a right, remember this… If someone has murdered someone else, Subhan Allah, it does not give us the right to murder a third party altogether. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us, and may Allah grant us guidance and ease. It's important we understand this. The world is bleeding today, and people are blaming the Muslims! Because from amongst us, some are being brainwashed. Brainwashed by what? They do not understand verses of the Quran. They don't understand the Asbab al-Nuzul, or reasons of the revelation of the verses of the Quran. They don't understand how to extract rules and regulations from verses of the Quran. They read something, someone shows them something and next thing they are prepared to give up their lives. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala grant us an understanding. We should be giving up our lives striving to earn the pleasure of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala through obedience, through Salah. Look at Muhammad sallā llāhu 'alay-hi wa-sallam when he went to Ta'if, look at his example. They beat him up personally, physically, he was bleeding and the angels came to him to say "If you want, we can crush these people between the mountains". What did he say? He said "I am sent as a mercy. We don't want that to happen. If they don't accept, perhaps their children will accept."”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

Patience, Sabr... And we think that the non-Muslims are our enemies – the minute we think that, automatically we will not be able to call them towards Islam. And they will get the wrong image of Islam. My brothers and sisters, Islam, it means peace, it stands for peace, it promotes peace, it teaches peace, and everything that you will achieve is peace. In this world peace, in the next peace, in your grave peace, with your children peace, in your environment peace. That is Islam. Anything that destroys that in any way is not Islam. Remember this. "Islam Condemns Terrorism - Powerful Reminder - Mufti Ismail Menk" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6O2anxz7CM, YouTube (2015) Lectures

Children, People, Pleasure, World

“Now but a shade
ahead on my life’s course will languish.
Behind is laid
my now abandoned way of anguish.Behind me lies
the spring beneath its cruel icing.
It life supplies –
to summer verses’ door enticing.It’s taken me,
this chilling hand that yet I cherish.
And now I see
in summer’s heart that I must perish.”

Saima Harmaja (1913–1937) Finnish poet and writer

A poem from the collection “Hunnutettu” (“Veiled”), translation by Rupert Moreton (1936)

Life, Way, Spring, Heart

“But I was miserable. I hurt inside. I didn’t have the peace of mind that Jesus promised if we did his work. I didn’t have the very thing I preached. Finally, in January of 1956 when I had but six months to go on my tour of duty, I made up my mind to settle it once and for all. I made a final study of the Bible and wrote down everything that sounded true in a notebook on my right. Those things that sounded wrong or inconsistent or that I couldn’t believe, I wrote in a notebook to my left. For three months, between 3:00 and 7:00 A. M., sitting under a single bulb in the attic above the barracks, I made a comparative study of the Synoptic Gospels. When I finished, the left-handed notebook was completely filled with chapter and verse and reasons why I could not believe in Christianity. The right-handed notebook contained about two pages of homilies on love. So I gave up Jesus and the Baptist Church.”

Oscar Zeta Acosta book Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 133.

Love, Peace, Study, Hurt

“The brahman Kasibhāradvāja addressed the Blessed One with a verse.
'You say you are a ploughman, but we do not see your ploughing. Being asked, tell us about your ploughing, so that we may know your ploughing.'
'Faith is the seed, penance is the rain, wisdom is my yoke and plough; modesty is the pole, mind is the yoke-tie, mindfulness is my ploughshare and goad….
Thus is this ploughing of mine ploughed. It has the death-free as its fruit. Having ploughed this ploughing one is freed from all misery.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

§ 75-80
Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), Sutta Nipata (Suttas falling down)

Death, Wisdom, Faith

“The number of levels (stages) in Heaven is (equivalent to) the number of verses in the Qur’an (6236). Thus, when a reciter of the Qur’an enters into Heaven, it will be said to him: ‘Go up one level for every verse that you can recite.’ Thus, no one will be in a higher level than the one who has memorized the entire Qur’an.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 92, Page 22
Shi'ite Hadith

“Then we have Sūrat al-Sharḥ, also known as al-Inshirāḥ. I need to make mention of this because in it is a lot of comfort for myself and yourselves. We have a problem in life. When we have a problem Allah says, "Don't worry, with that difficulty, there is ease." You will never know what ease is all about unless you've been through difficulty. Those who have a beautiful life, sometimes they are still worried and depressed because they don't know what it is like to have suffered a little bit. So Allah's blessing, he makes us suffer slightly so that when there's a little bit of ease, mashallah. You know, a man who's always driven a Rolls-Royce will never know what it's like to ride a bicycle to work. Two ways of making them ride. One is, the doctor tells you you're about to die, Allahu Akbar, and you need to ride to work. Immediately everything is given up. Why? Because we're worried about dear life. That's why. If you see people – Subhan Allah – I've seen a man who had a carrot, and he was pretending like he's smoking this carrot and nibbling on it. And I told him, I said: "My brother, what made you nibble on this carrot?" He says: "My doctor told me I can't smoke, and a good replacement is a carrot." I said: "Allahu Akbar, you're stuffing your mouth with a carrot because of a doctor, but when Allah told you smoking is bad, then you didn't want to listen…" Allahu Akbar. May Allah make us from amongst those who eat carrots rather than smoking cigarettes. Really. So, my brothers and sisters, it's a reality. Whenever there is a person who has tasted goodness alone, and they don't know what difficulty is about, there comes a time when they do not appreciate what they have. So like I was saying, two ways. One is, Allah snatches it away from you, so you now have nothing. So many people have climbed the peak in terms of materialistic items, and then they've dropped down the mountain. They say it's easier to drop from the top than it is from the bottom. Allahu Akbar. When you arrive at the top, a small movement and you roll down, you're with the avalanche, one time. And when you're at the bottom, they can kick you – if you drop, you stand up again and you're walking – same level, masshalah, it's all about altitude. May Allah protect us. Another thing is, when you drop from the top, greater likelihood of breaking more bones. When you drop from the bottom, "Ah, I might have just hurt my head slightly", just say "Ouch" and carry on. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala protect us and grant us humbleness. So, remember, sometimes Allah wants you to go down, so that you appreciate the bicycle after you had nothing, yet ten years ago you had the Rolls-Royce. May Allah bless us. So Allah says, and I'm sure we know verses, verse number five and six:
فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرً
إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا
"Indeed, with every difficulty [or, with difficulty] there is ease.
And indeed, with the difficulty there is ease."
[…] May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala alleviate the suffering that we are all going through in our own little ways. Remember it's a gift of Allah. To keep you in check sometimes. To keep you calling out to Him. May Allah open our doors.”

Ismail ibn Musa Menk (1975) Muslim cleric and Grand Mufti of Zimbabwe.

" Do you have problems in life? Watch This! by Mufti Menk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgp2zbE9Ofg", YouTube (2013) Lectures

Life, People, Beauty, Way

“Americans are uneasy with their possessions, guilty about power, all of which is difficult for Europeans to perceive because they are themselves so truly materialistic, so versed in the uses of power.”

Joan Didion book Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"The Howard Hughes Underground," http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=7&sid=e10e8a49-3c75-4cb4-8d00-c35bb5bdf29a@sessionmgr4001 The Saturday Evening Post (23 August 1967) "7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38," http://books.google.com/books?id=_pgrUFe9Fh8C&q=%22Americans+are+uneasy+with+their+possessions+guilty+about+power+all+of+which+is+difficult+for+Europeans+to+perceive+because+they+are+themselves+so+truly+materialistic+so+versed+in+the+uses+of+power%22&pg=PA71#v=onepage Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)

“One who recites ten verses (ayat) of the Qur’an every night will not be counted amongst the negligent ones (Ghafilin); and one who recites fifty verses (ayat) will be written as those who remember Allah (Dhakirin); and one who recites one hundred verses (ayat) will be written down as the obedient and worshipper of Allah”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Qanitin
Thawabul A’mal, Page 232
Shi'ite Hadith

Night

“A geologist should be well versed in chemistry, natural philosophy, mineralogy, zoology, comparative anatomy, botany; in short, in every science relating to organic and inorganic nature. …But the brief duration of human life, and our limited powers, are so far from permitting us to aspire to such extensive acquisitions, that excellence even in one department is within the reach of few, and those individuals most effectually promote the general progress, who concentrate their thoughts on a limited portion of the field of inquiry.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.1, p. 3
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Life, Nature, Science

“Blest pair! if aught my verse avail,
No day shall make your memory fail
From off the heart of time.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book IX, p. 324

Memory, Time, Heart

“Oh to be my verse an answering gleam from higher radiance caught”

Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879) British poet and hymn-writer

Prelude to The Ministry of Song, James Nisbet & Co, 1879.

“I find free verse very, very difficult to write.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

“For Rhime the Rudder is of Verses,
With which like Ships they steer their courses.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 463
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

“I was very sickly and weak during the first years of my infancy, and was, as much as I can remember of myself, a very whimsical boy. Sometimes I learned with enthusiasm, and often found myself in such a kind of ecstasy, that I neither could see nor hear what passed around me. In these fits of thought I forgot playthings and playfellows; I was happy only in my own musings. I always preferred the company of little girls to boys. I was not ten years old when I presented them with some poetry and little verses, the effusions of my heated imagination; some of them fell into my hands in riper years, and after reading them over, I left off poetry altogether. I loved my first private teacher very much; I even can remember him now. My second teacher was a simpleton; he could never understand me, nor enter into my feelings. My antipathy to this man grew daily greater; I could not learn of him, nor could he teach me anything. At last, when in my thirteenth year, I got rid of him, and he being encumbered with debts, I gave him my saving-box when he left. Whether I did this for pity's sake, or joy to get rid of him, I did not know.”

Albrecht Thaer (1752–1828) German agronomist and an avid supporter of the humus theory for plant nutrition

My Life and Confessions, for Philippine, 1786

Love, Happiness, Feeling, Imagination

“For Muslims the Quran is the Word of God; it is sacred scripture, not a work of "literature," a manual of law, or a text of theology, philosophy or history although it is of incomparable literary quality, contains many injunctions about a Sacred Law, is replete with verses of metaphysical, theological, and philosophical significance, and contains many accounts of sacred history. The unique structure of the Quran and the flow of its content constitute a particular challenge to most modern readers. For traditional Muslims the Quran is not a typical "read" or manual to be studied. For most of them, the most fruitful way of interacting with the Quran is not to sit down and read the Sacred Tex from cover to cover (although there are exceptions, such as completing the whole text during Ramadan). it is, rather, to recite a section with full awareness of it as the Word of God and to meditate upon it as one whose soul is being directly addressed, as the Prophet's soul was addressed during its revelation. … In this context it must be remembered that the Quran itself speaks constantly of the Origin and the Return, of all things coming from God and returning to Him, who himself has no origin or end. As the Word of god, the Quran also seems to have no beginning and no end. Certain turns of phrase and teachings about the Divine Reality, the human condition, the life of this world, and the Hereafter are often repeated, but they are not mere repetitions. Rather each iteration of a particular word, phrase, or verse opens the door of a hidden passage to other parts of the Quran. Each coda is always a prelude to an as yet undiscovered truth.”

Seyyed Hossein Nasr book The Study Quran

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary https://books.google.com/books?id=GVSzBgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover (2015)

Life, God, Truth, World

“…the author of The Satanic Verses book which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Qu'ran, and all involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death. I call on all zealous Muslims to execute them wherever they find them, so that no one will dare to insult the Islamic sanctions. Whoever is killed on this path will be regarded as a martyr, God willing.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Fatwa against Salman Rushdie (14 February 1989)
Foreign policy

Death, God, Books

“Beware! By Allah the son of Abu Quhafah (Abu Bakr) dressed himself with it (the caliphate) and he certainly knew that my position in relation to it was the same as the position of the axis in relation to the hand-mill. The flood water flows down from me and the bird cannot fly upto me. I put a curtain against the caliphate and kept myself detached from it.
Then I began to think whether I should assault or endure calmly the blinding darkness of tribulations wherein the grown up are made feeble and the young grow old and the true believer acts under strain till he meets Allah (on his death). I found that endurance thereon was wiser. So I adopted patience although there was pricking in the eye and suffocation (of mortification) in the throat. I watched the plundering of my inheritance till the first one went his way but handed over the Caliphate to Ibn al-Khattab after himself.
(Then he quoted al-A`sha's verse):
My days are now passed on the camel's back (in difficulty) while there were days (of ease) when I enjoyed the company of Jabir's brother Hayyan.
It is strange that during his lifetime he wished to be released from the caliphate but he confirmed it for the other one after his death. No doubt these two shared its udders strictly among themselves. This one put the Caliphate in a tough enclosure where the utterance was haughty and the touch was rough. Mistakes were in plenty and so also the excuses therefore. One in contact with it was like the rider of an unruly camel. If he pulled up its rein the very nostril would be slit, but if he let it loose he would be thrown. Consequently, by Allah people got involved in recklessness, wickedness, unsteadiness and deviation.
Nevertheless, I remained patient despite length of period and stiffness of trial, till when he went his way (of death) he put the matter (of Caliphate) in a group and regarded me to be one of them. But good Heavens! what had I to do with this "consultation"? Where was any doubt about me with regard to the first of them that I was now considered akin to these ones? But I remained low when they were low and flew high when they flew high. One of them turned against me because of his hatred and the other got inclined the other way due to his in-law relationship and this thing and that thing, till the third man of these people stood up with heaving breasts between his dung and fodder. With him his children of his grand-father, (Umayyah) also stood up swallowing up Allah's wealth like a camel devouring the foliage of spring, till his rope broke down, his actions finished him and his gluttony brought him down prostrate.
At that moment, nothing took me by surprise, but the crowd of people rushing to me. It advanced towards me from every side like the mane of the hyena so much so that Hasan and Husayn were getting crushed and both the ends of my shoulder garment were torn. They collected around me like the herd of sheep and goats. When I took up the reins of government one party broke away and another turned disobedient while the rest began acting wrongfully as if they had not heard the word of Allah saying:
That abode in the hereafter, We assign it for those who intend not to exult themselves in the earth, nor (to make) mischief (therein); and the end is (best) for the pious ones. (Qur'an, 28:83)
Yes, by Allah, they had heard it and understood it but the world appeared glittering in their eyes and its embellishments seduced them. Behold, by Him who split the grain (to grow) and created living beings, if people had not come to me and supporters had not exhausted the argument and if there had been no pledge of Allah with the learned to the effect that they should not acquiesce in the gluttony of the oppressor and the hunger of the oppressed I would have cast the rope of Caliphate on its own shoulders, and would have given the last one the same treatment as to the first one. Then you would have seen that in my view this world of yours is no better than the sneezing of a goat.”

Ali book Nahj al-Balagha

Known as the Sermon of ash-Shiqshiqiyyah (roar of the camel), It is said that when Amir al-mu'minin reached here in his sermon a man of Iraq stood up and handed him over a writing. Amir al-mu'minin began looking at it, when Ibn `Abbas said, "O' Amir al-mu'minin, I wish you resumed your Sermon from where you broke it." Thereupon he replied, "O' Ibn `Abbas it was like the foam of a Camel which gushed out but subsided." Ibn `Abbas says that he never grieved over any utterance as he did over this one because Amir al-mu'minin could not finish it as he wished to.
Nahj al-Balagha

Death, Hunger, Children, People

“Besides, time, which despoils castles, enriches verses... Time broadens the scope of verses and I know of some which, like music, are everything for all men.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Averroës' Search" (1949)

Men, Music, Time

“The blueprints of verse can be used to build things made of literal, or nonpoetic material, which is why most verse is not poetry.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

“Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

As quoted in Free Verse. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 2nd ed (1975)
General sources

Art, Sense

“I swear by the life of Him Whom God shall make manifest! My Revelation is indeed far more bewildering than that of Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, if thou dost but pause to reflect upon the days of God. Behold, how strange that a person brought up amongst the people of Persia should be empowered by God to proclaim such irrefutable utterances as to silence every man of learning, and be enabled to spontaneously reveal verses far more rapidly than anyone could possibly set down in writing. Verily, no God is there but Him, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVI, 18.
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

Life, God, People, Silence

“At the repeated solicitations of my son Charley to procure him a berth as a midshipman in the navy, I take the liberty to address you the following lines, requesting you will be pleased to interest yourself in my son's behalf with Mr. Hamilton, so as to procure him the midshipman's berth in some of our frigates. Mr. Hamilton, I am sure, is a gentleman of great merit and of superior discernment in his department; consequently will duly appreciate the merits of a youth stepping forward in defense of his country. Though he is only sixteen years old, as a parent I can with confidence say [that] my son is of an engaging, aspiring disposition by nature, regardless of those little difficulties and trials that generally retard and dishearten those of his age in the pursuit of their favorite object. He has been educated for some years in Georgetown College and, consequently, has studied the languages for a certain space of time and is as well versed in arithmetic as most of his age generally are.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Charles Boarman, Sr. in a letter to Robert Brent, the mayor of Washington, D.C., asking for a letter of recommendation for his son's application to enlist in the United States Navy (1811)
A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U.S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (1991)

Youth, Age, Education, Confidence

“No doubt is there that the verses of God are verses that shine forth from this Tree, for the Eternal Essence has ever existed in His state of singleness, whereas the verses are a matter for creativity, which is the work of the Primal Will, in whom none can be seen save God alone. Although, in this day men do not look upon the verses of God, yet before long these same verses shall be recited in the most exalted manner and Bayans worth one thousand mithqals of gold shall be written; men shall pride themselves thereon and regard themselves as related to God.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

II, 3
The Persian Bayán

Men, God, Tree

“One who listens to the Qur’an (while it is being recited) will be kept away from the evils of this world; and one who recites the Qur’an will be kept away from the trials of the hereafter. And the person who listens to even one verse of the book of Allah - this is better (for him) than possessing a mansion of gold.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Biharul Anwar, Volume 92, Page 19
Shi'ite Hadith

Books, World, Evil, Personality

“To write a verse or two is all the praise
That I can raise.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Praise, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“You can teach the writing of verse.. like prose.. an instrument.. and the recognition of true poetry. The rest, writers must teach them selves.”

John Hollander (1929–2013) American poet

Interview with J D McCarthy 'The Art of Poetry' no 35 Fall 1985

“I am gone into the fields
To take what this sweet hour yields; —
Reflection, you may come to-morrow,
Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. —
You with the unpaid bill, Despair, —
You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care, —
I will pay you in the grave, —
Death will listen to your stave.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Source: To Jane: The Invitation (1822), l. 31

Death, Despair

“As long as Fortune wanted me
to keep on hoping for happiness
I took pleasure in amorous thoughts
and wrote down how they made me feel.
But Love, afraid that what I write
might serve free hearts as a warning,
clouded my inspiration with torment
to keep his deceits from coming to light.
O you whom Love has made the slaves
of various passions! When you read
in one small book such varied cases
know that they're pure truths, not tales,
and that your own experience in love
will lead you through my verses' meaning.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Richard Zenith, Sonnets and Other Poems (2009)
Lyric poetry, Sonnets, Enquanto quis Fortuna que tivesse

Love, Happiness, Pleasure, Truth

“From Hindus and Muslims have I broken free', said Arjan Dev Ji, the fifth Sikh guru, in the 1590s. (…) Yet, it is not as straightforward as separatists might wish. No Sikh Guru was ever a Muslim, ergo the half-sentence: 'Of Muslims have I broken free', does not mean that he abandoned Islam. Therefore, the other half need not be construed as a repudiation of Hinduism either. Rather, it may be read as repudiating the whole 'identity' business including the division of mankind into Hindu and Muslim categories, on the Upanishadic ground that the Self is beyond these superficial trappings (the Self being neti neti,? not this, not that?)-but that is a typically Hindu and decidedly un-Islamic position. To the Quran, group identity (being a member of the Muslim ummah or not) is everything, is laden with far-reaching consequences including an eternity in heaven or in hell. To Hindu society, it is also undeniably important; but to Hindu spirituality, it is not. Likewise, another verse of the same poem, 'I will not pray to idols nor say the Muslim prayer', is more anti-Islamic than anti-Hindu: it rejects a duty binding every single Muslim (prayer) and a practice common among Hindus (idol-worship) but by no means obligatory.”

Guru Arjan (1563–1606) The fifth Guru of Sikhism

Elst, K. (2002). Who is a Hindu?: Hindu revivalist views of Animism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and other offshoots of Hinduism. Ch. 8.

Hell, Business, Reading

“Rhyme, the rack of finest wits,
That expresseth but by fits,
True conceit,
Spoiling senses of their treasure,
Cozening judgement with a measure,
But false weight.
Wresting words from their true calling;
Propping verse, for fear of falling
To the ground.
Jointing syllables, drowning letters,
Fastening vowels, as with fetters
They were bound!”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

XXIX, A Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme, lines 1-12
The Works of Ben Jonson, Second Folio (1640), Underwoods

Fear, Sense, Falseness

“His opinion of verses.
That he wrote all his first in prose, for so his master Camden had learned him.

That verses stood by sense without either colours or accent; which yet other times he denied.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Sense, Learning, Time

“We need to understand a couple of things. The original creation was very different. The Bible says that there was not only the earth but that there was water inside the crust of the earth. It was under the top crust of the earth actually. Psalm 24 says, "The earth is the Lord's, he hath founded it upon the seas." That's an interesting verse. The earth was built on top of the water. […] And then the "fountains of the deep" broke open. The water which used to be in the crust went shooting to the surface when the fountains of the deep broke open. […] And God is telling us here in the book of Job, God is talking here in chapter 38, that when the water issued out of the earth, it just burst out of the earth. It goes on and says, "And brake up for it my decreed place, and put bars and doors, and said,… Hitherto shalt thou come but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed." I believe the earth broke up at the time of the Flood and we still have the scars all over the planet where this happened. They are called fault lines.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Hovind theory

God, Books, Understanding, Water

“The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor — dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.”

W. H. Auden book The Dyer's Hand

"Writing", p. 22
The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

Cooking

“In 1916 at the 'Cabaret Voltaire', Ball presented six poems, which he described as 'Verse ohne Worte' (Poems without words) or 'Lautgedichte'(Sound poems); 'Gadji beri bimba' was one of them.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

1916, Gadji beri bimba (c. 1916)

“I thinke it not amisse to forewarne you that you thrust as few wordes of many sillables into your verse as may be: and hereunto I might alledge many reasons: first the most auncient English wordes are of one sillable, so that the more monasyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seeme, and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne.”

George Gascoigne (1525–1577) English politician and poet

"Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme in English", from The Posies; pp. 457-8.

Thinking

“In all matters but particularly in architecture …that which is signified is the subject of which we may be speaking and that which gives significance is a demonstration on scientific principles. …One who professes himself an architect should be well versed in both directions.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 3

“[Pao-yu] could not see why beautiful maidens should marry and become slaves of men who would take them for granted, when they could just as well remain carefree and do nothing but play games and write verses.”

Wang Chi-chen (1899–2001)

Source: Dream of the Red Chamber (1958), p. 272

Men, Beauty, Game

“It was to little purpose to excuse the matter, by saying, that the badness of the Verses was a kind of Testimony that they were made by a God, who nobly scorn'd to be tyed up to rules and to be confined to the Beauty of a Style.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)
Context: It was to little purpose to excuse the matter, by saying, that the badness of the Verses was a kind of Testimony that they were made by a God, who nobly scorn'd to be tyed up to rules and to be confined to the Beauty of a Style. For this made no impression upon the Philosophers; who, to turn this answer into ridicule, compared it to the Story of a Painter, who being hired to draw the Picture of a Horse tumbling on his Back upon the ground, drew one running full speed: and when he was told, that this was not such a Picture as was bespoke, he turned it upside down, and then ask'd if the Horse did not tumble upon his back now. Thus these Philosophers jeered such Persons, who by a way of arguing that would serve both ways, could equally prove that the Verses were made by a God, whether they were good or bad.<!--pp. 219-220

God, Beauty

“An artist by temperament, he was a scholar in the truest sense, interested and well versed in all branches of human learning, not in the manner of present-day specialists who confine themselves in the limited branches of their chosen fields. He was also recognized as the most authoritative historian and interpreter of fruitful and transcendental events in our epoch, a researcher of the first order, a collector of rare and antique objects that are landmarks of Philippine culture.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

BALIW
Context: He was undoubtedly the best critic, writer and biographer that the golden age of literature in our country have ever produced. An artist by temperament, he was a scholar in the truest sense, interested and well versed in all branches of human learning, not in the manner of present-day specialists who confine themselves in the limited branches of their chosen fields. He was also recognized as the most authoritative historian and interpreter of fruitful and transcendental events in our epoch, a researcher of the first order, a collector of rare and antique objects that are landmarks of Philippine culture. None could equal him in rigidness and perseverance and study of our past, even in search of our wealth of relevant and important data that enrich the sources for the study of national history and literature. He was also recognized as the foremost Filipino scholar of his time. -Rafael Palma

Sense, Learning

“The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves.”

Salman Rushdie book Imaginary Homelands

Imaginary Homelands (1992)
Context: Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion. The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Melange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world… The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves.

Love, Change

“I made these little verses, another took the honor.”
Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores.

Virgil (-70–-19 BC) Ancient Roman poet

Epigram attributed to Virgil in Donatus' Life of Virgil.
Attributed

“All I am is in my verse.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Scannell's quote to his wife Jo, relayed to James Andrew Taylor - Walking Wounded: The Life and poetry of Vernon Scannell O U P 2013 ISBN 9780199603183

“This is all he says about the most wonderful vision that ever astonished human eyes, a miracle great enough to have stuffed credulity to bursting; and yet all we have is this one, poor, meagre verse.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Orthodoxy (1884)
Context: Mark says: “So, then, after the Lord had spoken unto them he was received up into heaven and sat on the right hand of God.” This is all he says about the most wonderful vision that ever astonished human eyes, a miracle great enough to have stuffed credulity to bursting; and yet all we have is this one, poor, meagre verse.

“Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year.”

Vachel Lindsay (1879–1931) American poet

What It Means to Be a Poet in America (1926)
Context: Whenever I begin to write a poem or draw a picture I am, in imagination, if not in reality, back in my room where I began to draw pen-and-ink pictures and write verses in my seventeenth year. Both windows of the room look down on the great Governor’s Yard of Illinois. This yard is a square block, a beautiful park. Our house is on so high a hill I can always look down upon the governor. Among my very earliest memories are those of seeing old Governor Oglesby leaning on his cane, marching about, calling his children about him.

Imagination, Reality, Drawing

“For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse —
But all may be described in verse.”

T.S. Eliot book Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

The Ad-dressing of Cats
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (1939)
Context: You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse —
But all may be described in verse.

Madness

“Certainly Mr Eliot in the twenties was responsible for a great vogue for verse-satire.”

Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) writer and painter

Notes to Kenneth Allott, as quoted in Contemporary Verse (1948) edited by Kenneth Allott
Context: Certainly Mr Eliot in the twenties was responsible for a great vogue for verse-satire. An ideal formula of ironic, gently "satiric", self-expression was provided by that master for the undergraduate underworld, tired and thirsty for poetic fame in a small way. The results of Mr Eliot are not Mr Eliot himself: but satire with him has been the painted smile of the clown. Habits of expression ensuing from mannerism are, as a fact, remote from the central function of satire. In its essence the purpose of satire — whether verse or prose — is aggression. (When whimsical, sentimental, or "poetic" it is a sort of bastard humour.) Satire has a great big glaring target. If successful, it blasts a great big hole in the center. Directness there must be and singleness of aim: it is all aim, all trajectory.

“If you take the cruel passages, the verses that inculcate eternal hatred, verses that writhe and hiss like serpents, you can make a creed that would shock the heart of a hyena.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

What Would You Substitute for the Bible as a Moral Guide? (1900)
Context: I admit that there are many good things in the New Testament, and if we take from that book the dogmas of eternal pain, of infinite revenge, of the atonement, of human sacrifice, of the necessity of shedding blood; if we throw away the doctrine of non-resistance, of loving enemies, the idea that prosperity is the result of wickedness, that poverty is a preparation for Paradise, if we throw all these away and take the good, sensible passages, applicable to conduct, then we can make a fairly good moral guide, — narrow, but moral.
Of course, many important things would be left out. You would have nothing about human rights, nothing in favor of the family, nothing for education, nothing for investigation, for thought and reason, but still you would have a fairly good moral guide. On the other hand, if you would take the foolish passages, the extreme ones, you could make a creed that would satisfy an insane asylum. If you take the cruel passages, the verses that inculcate eternal hatred, verses that writhe and hiss like serpents, you can make a creed that would shock the heart of a hyena. It may be that no book contains better passages than the New Testament, but certainly no book contains worse. Below the blossom of love you find the thorn of hatred; on the lips that kiss, you find the poison of the cobra. The Bible is not a moral guide. Any man who follows faithfully all its teachings is an enemy of society and will probably end his days in a prison or an asylum.

Heart

“We find the verses, "I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34), and "Let him sell his cloak and buy a sword" (Luke 22:36), which are used as proof that Jesus wanted his disciples to be prepared for war.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: The Sword or the Cross, Which Should be the Weapon of the Christian Militant? (1921), Ch.4 p. 63-64
Context: We find the verses, "I came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34), and "Let him sell his cloak and buy a sword" (Luke 22:36), which are used as proof that Jesus wanted his disciples to be prepared for war.... in Matthew, we find that the very next verse reads: "For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.... If one means that Jesus came to bring a literal sword then the next means that he came as a great home-wrecker, setting the members thereof one against the other. Such a literal interpretation prevents any clear understanding of the words of Jesus. Surely his words, "I came not to send peace but a sword," mean that he came to bring about a sharp division between those who do right and those who do wrong. In Kent's translation of the New Testament, these words read: "I did not come to bring peace, but a struggle. For I came to make a man disagree with his father, a daughter with her mother, and a daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law. It is to be doubted if a single reputable Biblical scholar can be found who will interpret these words to mean that Jesus had reference to a literal sword as a means of accomplishing a desired end. With reference to the passage in Luke, one has only to read the verses that follow to see that Jesus could not have meant these words as a sanction of war. It was the last evening of Jesus life... He himself was about to be reckoned with transgressors and surely his disciples would have to encounter bitter opposition. They must therefore be prepared must be armed must have swords.... the disciples, promptly misunderstanding Jesus' reference to a sword, reminded him that they had two, and he replied, "It is enough" or according to Moffatt's translation, "Enough! Enough!"). But obviously, two swords were not enough to defend his life from his strong and determined foes; two swords were not enough for war. They were, however, enough and even one was enough, to convey his thought of being prepared for the time of stress that was approaching. Professor Hastings Rashdall, the eminent theologian and philosopher, says in this connection: "More probably the words were 'a piece of ironical foreboding,' which the disciples took literally. The 'it is enough' will then mean, 'Drop that idea: my words were not meant seriously."

War, Peace

“I have always done things in my own way, which is at once the way that comes naturally to me, that is honest, sincere, genuine, and unforced; but also perverse, although you must remember that this word means per (through) verse (poetry), out-of-the-way and wayward, which is surely towards the way, and that to be queer—to "follow your own weird"—is wholeheartedly to accept your karma, or fate, or destiny, and thus to be odd in the service of God, "whose service," as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer declares, "is perfect freedom."”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. xiii

God, Fate, Books, Way

“Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

"To a Poet Who Died Young" in Second April‎ (1921), p. 52
Context: Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath;
Here's a song was never sung:
Growing old is dying young.

Death

“So did Allah distinguish you with a verse, from which He excluded my father?”

Fatimah (604–632) daughter of Muhammad and Khadijah

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.29, p. 216 ; al-Tabarsi, al-Ihtijāj, vol.1, p. 132-141.
Context: Oh Muslims! Is my inheritance usurped? Oh son of Abu Quhafa (Abu Bakr), is it in the Book of Allah that you inherit your father and I do not inherit my father? Surely you have done a strange thing! Did you intendedly desert the Book of Allah and turned your back on it? Allah said: "And Solomon was David's heir." (27:16); and said about John son of Zechariah: "Grant me from Thyself an heir, who should inherit me and inherit from the children of Jacob." (19:5-6) and said: "And the possessors of relationships are nearer to each other in the ordinance of Allah." (8:75), and He said: "Allah enjoins you concerning your children: The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females." (4:11), and He said: "Bequest is prescribed for you when death approaches one of you, if he leaves behind wealth for parents and near relatives." (2:180). You claimed that I have no position, and no inheritance from my father, and there is no kinship between us. So did Allah distinguish you with a verse, from which He excluded my father? Or do you say: people of two religions do not inherit each other? Am I and my father not of one religion? Or are you more aware of the Qur’an than my father and my cousin? So, here it is before you! Take it with its noseband and saddle! It shall dispute with you on the Day of Punishment; what a fair judge Allah is, the master (of the inheritance) is Muhammad, and the appointment is the Day of Resurrection. At the time of the Hour the wrongdoers shall lose, and it shall not benefit you to regret then! For every Message, there is a time limit, and ye shall know to whom a punishment that will confound him comes, and upon whom a lasting doom will fall.

“Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Poetry For Supper"
Poetry For Supper (1958)
Context: Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust
Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.

“This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

Dedication (1960)
Context: Today is for my cause a day of days.
And his be poetry's old-fashioned praise
Who was the first to think of such a thing.
This verse that in acknowledgement I bring
Goes back to the beginning of the end
Of what had been for centuries the trend;
A turning point in modern history.

History

“A verse may finde him, who a sermon flies
And turns delight into a sacrifice”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

The Temple (1633), The Church Porch

“Verse 1 Line 5&6”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

The Temple (1633), The Church Porch

“Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Prelude
Middlemarch (1871)
Context: Some have felt that these blundering lives are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme Power has fashioned the natures of women: if there were one level of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count three and no more, the social lot of women might be treated with scientific certitude. Meanwhile the indefiniteness remains, and the limits of variation are really much wider than any one would imagine from the sameness of women's coiffure and the favorite love-stories in prose and verse. Here and there a cygnet is reared uneasily among the ducklings in the brown pond, and never finds the living stream in fellowship with its own oary-footed kind. Here and there is born a Saint Theresa, foundress of nothing, whose loving heart-beats and sobs after an unattained goodness tremble off and are dispersed among hindrances, instead of centring in some long-recognizable deed.

Love, Women, Imagination, Fashion

“It's a pity, a gentleman in refined retirement composing poetry:
He models his work on the classic verse of China.
And his poems are elegant, full of fine phrases.
But if you don't write of things deep in your own heart,
What's the use of churning out so many words?”

Ryōkan (1758–1831) Japanese Buddhist monk

Variant translation:
With gaudy words their lines are formed
And further adorned by novel and curious phrases.
Yet if they fail to express what is in their own minds
What is the use, no matter
How many poems they compose!
"Zen Poetics of Ryokan" in Simply Haiku: A Quarterly Journal of Japanese Short Form Poetry (Summer 2006)
Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf : Zen Poems of Ryokan (1993)

Heart

“The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure.”

Salman Rushdie book Imaginary Homelands

Fear, Idea

“I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Self-Reliance
Context: I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, — and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.

Soul, Reading

“I suppose the desire for publication is a normal part of the instinct for writing… the writer sits at home, and the mere fact of being printed provides his verses with a kind of audience… So, having his vanity partially satisfied, he can go ahead and try better work.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

Letter to a group of Occidental College students (1955)
Context: When I first went to Occidental College... there was a literary magazine... called the Aurora, and I remember thinking it odd that Occidental — the west, the setting sun — should be represented by a magazine called Aurora, the dawn. At least it gave us a wide range, the whole daylight sky.
I was continually writing verses in those days. Nobody, not even I myself, thought they were good verses; but Aurora's editor accepted many of them and it gave me pleasure to see my rhymes in print. They did rhyme, if that is any value, and were usually metrical, but why was I so eager to publish what hardly anyone would read and no one would remember? I suppose the desire for publication is a normal part of the instinct for writing... the writer sits at home, and the mere fact of being printed provides his verses with a kind of audience... So, having his vanity partially satisfied, he can go ahead and try better work.

Home, Parting

“Interiorizing this notion, Tilak then went on to develop fanciful interpretations of Vedic verses so as to make them fit the scenario of a non-Indian, indeed Arctic setting of the oldest layer of Vedic literature. Perfectly innocuous verses about the dawn or the seasons, always read in their natural meaning by one or two hundred generations of Brahmins, were suddenly contrived to reveal references to the Arctic. It is this highly artificial and totally untraditional reading of the Vedic hymns which became and remains the sheet-anchor of Aryan invasion lore in European far-rightist and new-rightist circles. Tilak was no authority on Indo-European expansion history...”

Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) Indian independence activist

About Tilaks influential book on the Rigveda. Elst, Koenraad. Return of the Swastika: Hate and Hysteria versus Hindu Sanity (2007)

Making love, History, Literature, Nature

“I often wish I was asked more about the craft of the verse. I spent so many agonizing hours ensuring every line break was precise, every word and repetition chosen with care—because it was important to me to maintain the integrity of the lyric while also advancing the narrative. It’s that tightrope walk I’m studying in other people’s work and am continuously looking to understand further.”

Elizabeth Acevedo American poet and author

On desiring to be asked about her writing style in interviews in “Meet National Book Award Finalist Elizabeth Acevedo” https://lithub.com/meet-national-book-award-finalist-elizabeth-acevedo/ in LitHub (2018 Oct 29)

People, Understanding, Study

“Since quoting the Quran may get this book banned, I will merely give the verse numbers…”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

1990s, Ayodhya and After: Issues Before Hindu Society (1991)

Books, Quotes

“I chose to rewrite it in poetry because the original Ramayana was in poetry- the fact is, it’s sort of been corrupted into prose. In its original form it was an epic poem rather like the Iliad or works of that sort. Rather than traditional poetry, it was a verse novel, without a traditional structure. What I most wanted to do was to preserve the essential musicality of the lines. Especially as the Ramayana like so many stories, was based on a fundamentally oral tradition.”

Daljit Nagra (1966) British poet, teacher and broadcaster

On reworking the Ramayana in “An Interview With Daljit Nagra” https://www.thebubble.org.uk/culture/literature/an-interview-with-daljit-nagra/ in The Bubble (2014 Sept 17)

Music

“For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air is music, we hear those primal warblings, and attempt to write them down, but we lose ever and anon a word, or a verse, and substitute something of our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear, as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Music

1840s, Essays: Second Series (1844), The Poet

Men, Beauty, Music, Nature

“I do not leave any verses, dogmas, nor any moulded standard principles as moral heritage. My moral heritage is science and reason. What I have done and intended to do for the Turkish nation lies in that. Anyone willing to appropriate my ideas for themselves after me will be my moral inheritors provided they would approve the guidance of science and reason on this axis.”

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881–1938) Turkish army officer, revolutionary, and the first President of Turkey

As quoted in Kemalist Devrim ve İdeolojisi (1980) by İsmet Giritli, İstanbul Üniversitesi Yayınları, p. 13

Idea, Science

“I must admit, sir, that I have modified the verses a little, to allow for the new things I have learned, so I am an unreliable source of truth, sir, save in its most fundamental sense. Like a majority of poets, sir.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 3 “A Rose Redeemed; A Rose Revived,” Chapter 1 “Of Weapons Possessed of Will” (p. 270)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

Truth, Sense, Learning

“What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.”

Brennan Manning book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 168 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA168 1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)

Making love, Faith, Failure, Success

“Two things are essential to the astrologer, namely, a bag of cowries and an almanac, When any one comes to consult him he quietly sits down, facing the sun, on a plank seat or mat, murmuring some mantrams or sacred verses, opens his bag of cowries and pours them on the floor. With his right hand he moves them slowly round and round, solemnly inciting meanwhile a stanza or two in praise of his guru or teacher and of his deity, invoking their help. He then stops and explains what, lie has been doing, at the same time taking a handful of cowries from the heap and placing them on one side. In front is a diagram drawn with chalk on tire floor and consisting of twelve compartments. Before commencing operations with the diagram he selects three or five of the cowries highest up in tho heap and places them in a line on the right-hand side. These represent Ganapati (the Belly God, the remover of difficulties), the sun, the planet Jupiter, Sarasvati (the Goddess of speech), and his own Guru or preceptor. To all of those the astrologor gives due obeisance, touching his ears and the ground three times with both hands. The cowries are next arranged in the compartments of tho diagram and are moved about from compartment to compartment by the astrologer, who quotes meanwhile tho authority on which ho makes such moves. Finally he explains the result, and ends with again worshipping the deified cowries who were witnessing the operation as spectators.”

William Logan (author) book Malabar Manual

Malabar Manual, Page 142 https://archive.org/details/MalabarLogan/page/n154 Malabar Manual (1887)

God, Lie, Making love, Quotes

“I have given detailed instructions for the establishment of silk industry in Mysore. Silk worms and men well versed in the art of rearing them have already arrived from foreign lands to train our people. Eighteen centres have been set up for development of the industry. Many more are needed. Every encouragement is being given to plantation of mulberry trees. I would like you to take direct interest in this developmental activity. My goal is clear: I want Mysore to be the foremost amongst silk producing nations.”

Tipu Sultan (1750–1799) Ruler of the Sultanate of Mysore

Tipu Sultan's address on 1788, Quoted in The Sword of Tipu Sultan, by Bhagwan S Gidwani https://books.google.com.sa/books?id=EimPBAAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PT262#v=onepage&q&f=true From Tipu Sultan's Decrees

Men, People, Art, Tree

“In sharp contrast to these intimate references to typically Indian animals are the references to an animal which is restricted to the extreme northwest: the bactrian camel of Afghanistan and beyond. This camel, uSTra, is referred to only in the following verses: … The distribution of these references is restricted only to hymns belonging to the Late Period.”

Shrikant Talageri (1958) Indian author

The Rigveda: A Historical Analysis (2000), Chapter 4 : The Geography of the Rigveda

Animals

“Few men have had their elasticity so thoroughly put to the proof as Caesar-- the sole creative genius produced by Rome, and the last produced by the ancient world, which accordingly moved on in the path that he marked out for it until its sun went down. Sprung from one of the oldest noble families of Latium--which traced back its lineage to the heroes of the Iliad and the kings of Rome, and in fact to the Venus-Aphrodite common to both nations--he spent the years of his boyhood and early manhood as the genteel youth of that epoch were wont to spend them. He had tasted the sweetness as well as the bitterness of the cup of fashionable life, had recited and declaimed, had practised literature and made verses in his idle hours, had prosecuted love-intrigues of every sort, and got himself initiated into all the mysteries of shaving, curls, and ruffles pertaining to the toilette-wisdom of the day, as well as into the still more mysterious art of always borrowing and never paying. But the flexible steel of that nature was proof against even these dissipated and flighty courses; Caesar retained both his bodily vigour and his elasticity of mind and of heart unimpaired. In fencing and in riding he was a match for any of his soldiers, and his swimming saved his life at Alexandria; the incredible rapidity of his journeys, which usually for the sake of gaining time were performed by night--a thorough contrast to the procession-like slowness with which Pompeius moved from one place to another-- was the astonishment of his contemporaries and not the least among the causes of his success. The mind was like the body. His remarkable power of intuition revealed itself in the precision and practicability of all his arrangements, even where he gave orders without having seen with his own eyes. His memory was matchless, and it was easy for him to carry on several occupations simultaneously with equal self-possession. Although a gentleman, a man of genius, and a monarch, he had still a heart. So long as he lived, he cherished the purest veneration for his worthy mother Aurelia (his father having died early); to his wives and above all to his daughter Julia he devoted an honourable affection, which was not without reflex influence even on political affairs. With the ablest and most excellent men of his time, of high and of humbler rank, he maintained noble relations of mutual fidelity, with each after his kind. As he himself never abandoned any of his partisans after the pusillanimous and unfeeling manner of Pompeius, but adhered to his friends--and that not merely from calculation--through good and bad times without wavering, several of these, such as Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Matius, gave, even after his death, noble testimonies of their attachment to him.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol.4. Part 2.
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Love, Life, Death, Wisdom

“To correct the tribe of our younger poets we shall soon require the aid of a physician, not of a critic. Their history may be told in a few words. A young man educated, or rather mis-educated, without experience, without study, without any definite tendency, without the power of exertion, or of tasting any genuine enjoyment, becomes conscious of his miserable oscillation between existence and non-existence —between not having lived and not being about to live—between a barren past and a barren future. He now takes to novel reading, frequents the theatres, compares himself to heroes or poets, and makes verses. All on a sudden the thought flashes across his mind that his unhappy condition is connected with the unfilled profundity of his feelings—with an unsatisfied yearning of the soul. He rushes headlong into the ocean of melancholy, and indulges in expressions with which the poetic springs of latter years have inundated us; he bathes in these waters, and contemplates his own image reflected from their surface.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

Source: The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838), pp. 136-137

Education, Making love, Feeling, Soul

“Ibn Warraq is the pen-name of the author whose parents emigrated from India to Pakistan as a result of the Partition. He was brought up in Pakistan, which was supposed to be an Islamic Republic. His experience revealed to him that the Muslims of India had been cheated in the name of Islam and its projected principles of equality, free will and democracy. As he grew up, he noticed that Islam had become an effective tool of convenient morality and achieving political goals; a religious or secular leader could prove anything from the Koran and Hadith to suit his purpose, yet every faithful believes that there is no contradiction in the verses of the Koran!”

Ibn Warraq (1946) Pakistani writer

Anwar Shaikh quoted from Goel, Sita Ram (editor) (1998). Freedom of expression: Secular theocracy versus liberal democracy. https://web.archive.org/web/20171026023112/http://www.bharatvani.org:80/books/foe/index.htm

Faith, Democracy, Parent, Cheating

“We didn’t know that right before us Hari Kunzru and Amitava Kumar had just read from The Satanic Verses in a separate session. The minute I finished, people were queuing for me to sign copies of Narcopolis. But we were taken to this room where Hari and Amitava were sitting and we weren’t allowed to leave. There was a lawyer, there were police on site and they threatened to close down the festival which made all of us feel like shit. I was full of remorse, because the directors are our friends and we knew how much work they had put into it, but I don’t think we were really in trouble. Even though we were told to make ourselves scarce.”

Jeet Thayil (1959) Indian writer

Jeet Thayil: Confessions of an Indian Opium-Eater

People, Making love, Feeling, Thinking

“His fame rests mainly on his Aryabhatiya, but from the writings of Varahamihira (Sixth century AD), Bhaskara I, and Brahmagupta (seventh century) it is clear that earlier he composed the Aryabhata Siddhantha (voluminous) is not extant. It is also called Ardharatrika Siddhanta, because in it the civil days were reckoned from one midnight to the next; 34 verses on astronomical instruments from this have been quoted by Ramakrishna Aradya.”

Aryabhata (476–550) Indian mathematician-astronomer

In, p. 244.
Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

Quotes

“Tulsidas was a poor recluse who lived an ascetic life and prompted by an inner light, adapted an old epic in folk-verse which broke all barriers and spread far and wide.”

Tulsidas (1532–1623) Hindu poet-saint

Shiva Kumar Tripathi in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 36

Life, Light

“Craft is something you learn by studying models. When a student asks, what is a good book about traditional iambic verse, The Collected Poems of Ben Jonson. What is an excellent book about free verse? The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

What is a good book about short line in ballad metre? The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson.
The Art of Poetry - interview 1995 with Downing & Kunitz

Books, Study, Learning

“In the history of versification did anyone ever juggle so wildly well with iambics, sapphics, dactylics, anapestics, and all the rest? He fabricated verses most ingeniously, most enthusiastically. His virtuosity is amazing. Almost every line he wrote was a tour de force.”

Ausonius (310–395) poet

And in spite of all this highly self-conscious technical facility he managed occasionally to write poetry.
Edward Townsend Booth, God Made the Country (1946), p. 37.
Criticism

History