What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

Nature is at work. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives us love and hate, jealousy and reverence. All that is ours is the power to choose which impulse we shall follow.

Courage and conviction are powerful weapons against an enemy who depends only on fists or guns. Animals know when you are afraid; a coward knows when you are not.

Good humor isn't a trait of character, it is an art which requires practice.

I have to stay alone in order to fully contemplate and feel nature.

Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life.

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

Youth smiles without any reason. It is one of its chiefest charms.

Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.

It's human nature to start taking things for granted again when danger isn't banging loudly on the door.

The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing.

Nature is good at connectivity. The impact of diverse human activities is observed and absorbed throughout nature. Everything is linked. Nature has no problem with coherence. Ecosystems react with their own logic.

Extremist perspectives win sympathy and recruits because they offer narratives that claim to identify deep injustices and enemies.

Nature's my muse and it's been my passion.

The cool wind blew in my face and all at once I felt as if I had shed dullness from myself. Before me lay a long gray line with a black mark down the center. The birds were singing. It was spring.

Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves.

If you desire ease, forsake learning.

Although you may spend your life killing, You will not exhaust all your foes. But if you quell your own anger, your real enemy will be slain.

I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry.

A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings - about human feelings and frailties.

Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly.

Sound is the vocabulary of nature.

Nature abhors a hero. For one thing, he violates the law of conservation of energy. For another, how can it be the survival of the fittest when the fittest keeps putting himself in situations where he is most likely to be creamed?

The fulness of the godhead dwelt in every blade of grass.

Therefore, don't let sinners take courage to think they will be favoured like the thief on the cross; for we see on the other side, they may be like the hardened one, and reproach death itself.

I love the long grass coming up to meet the willows.

There is nothing in which the birds differ more from man than the way in which they can build and yet leave a landscape as it was before.

It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.

I've always regarded nature as the clothing of God.

It's hard for me to think of others because I'm not particularly in sympathy with the music of this century.

People in cities may forget the soil for as long as a hundred years, but Mother Nature's memory is long and she will not let them forget indefinitely.

I admire 'Adventure Time' for being a piece of art in the way that I think art should be. If you want to see it is poetry, you can, and if you don't, you can watch a fun cartoon.

We all need ways to express ourselves, and poetry is one of mine.

Poetry seems to sink into us the way prose doesn't. I can still quote verses I learned when I was very young, but I have trouble remembering one line of a novel I just finished reading.

Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.

Otherwise I don't read much adult poetry at all, because I'm not smart enough and mostly I don't get it.

I look for poetry in English because it's the only language I read.

Frankly, writing poetry for children is plain old fun, and I consider myself blessed to have such a delightful career.

Writing gives me the opportunity to explore ideas, play with language, solve problems, use my imagination, and draw on my own childhood.

Then I decided to draw from and on my own imagination, and everything came out perfect.

How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.

The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.

Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man's expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.

Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and emotionally. The poet then becomes a danger.

We wrote verses that condemned us, with no hope of pardon, to the most bitter solitude.

Poetry is a matter of life, not just a matter of language.