Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.

I must stress here the point that I appreciate clarity, order, meaning, structure, rationality: they are necessary to whatever provisional stability we have, and they can be the agents of gradual and successful change.

Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same.

If the greatest god is the stillness all the motions add up to, then we must ineluctably be included.

Besides the actual reading in class of many poems, I would suggest you do two things: first, while teaching everything you can and keeping free of it, teach that poetry is a mode of discourse that differs from logical exposition.

If we ask a vague question, such as, 'What is poetry?' we expect a vague answer, such as, 'Poetry is the music of words,' or 'Poetry is the linguistic correction of disorder.'

In nature there are few sharp lines.

That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends.

You have your identity when you find out, not what you can keep your mind on, but what you can't keep your mind off.

Questions structure and, so, to some extent predetermine answers.

Once every five hundred years or so, a summary statement about poetry comes along that we can't imagine ourselves living without.

There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.

The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.

I am grateful for - though I can't keep up with - the flood of articles, theses, and textbooks that mean to share insight concerning the nature of poetry.

Definition, rationality, and structure are ways of seeing, but they become prisons when they blank out other ways of seeing.

I can't tell you where a poem comes from, what it is, or what it is for: nor can any other man. The reason I can't tell you is that the purpose of a poem is to go past telling, to be recognised by burning.

If a poem is each time new, then it is necessarily an act of discovery, a chance taken, a chance that may lead to fulfillment or disaster.

Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.

Poetry leads us to the unstructured sources of our beings, to the unknown, and returns us to our rational, structured selves refreshed.

Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.

Each poem in becoming generates the laws by which it is generated: extensions of the laws to other poems never completely take.

Probably all the attention to poetry results in some value, though the attention is more often directed to lesser than to greater values.

For though we often need to be restored to the small, concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to be reminded of the large, vague, unlimited, unknown.

A poem generated by its own laws may be unrealized and bad in terms of so-called objective principles of taste, judgement, deduction.

I take the walk to be the externalization of an interior seeking so that the analogy is first of all between the external and the internal.

Everything is discursive opinion instead of direct experience.

Only silence perfects silence.

The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.

The severity of the laws prevents their execution.

Wise people, even though all laws were abolished, would still lead the same life.

Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.

The unions claim the deck is stacked against them when it comes to labor laws, but the truth is many private and public sector workers are forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment, yet they have little say in how the unions spend their money.

Nature's laws must be obeyed, and the period of decline begins, and goes on with accelerated rapidity.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

As a strong supporter of our 2nd Amendment rights, I believe tougher enforcement of our nation's existing gun laws must be done before any more laws are enacted and put on the books.

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

It's difficult to believe that Al Gore was oblivious to the existing laws. He has to respond at some point.

There are no good laws but such as repeal other laws.

What is crucial is there be laws.

Unless one is a religious fundamentalist and believes that man was created in the image and likeness of God, it is foolish to believe that human beings are exempt from biological classification and the laws of evolution that apply to all other life forms.

They will sustain the constitution and laws and institutions of the United States, and be the champions of liberty and of that constitution when its integrity shall be threatened.

When we fled from the oppressions of kings and parliaments in Europe, to found this great Republic in America, we brought with us the laws and the liberties, which formed a part of our heritage as Britons.

Give us a chance to show you that those so-called protective laws to aid women - however well intentioned originally - have become in fact restraints, which keep wife, abandoned wife, and widow alike from supporting her family.

Both of these branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation.

Unless we repeal the illegal Byrd amendment, American exports will be vulnerable to retaliation, and the U.S. will continue to face a difficult task convincing other countries to make their laws comply with international rules.

The planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer... form the great body of the people of the United States, they are the bone and sinew of the country men who love liberty and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws.

Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.