As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.

Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.

Believe that a further shore is reachable from here.

Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's done.

I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme

Poetry is always slightly mysterious, and you wonder what is your relationship to it.

All I know is a door into the dark

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.

There is a meaning of life but I've been sworn to secrecy.

Oh, so you see some chick in baggy jeans and a hoodie, and you just have to have her so bad, you decide to repeat high school, just to get her?" "Sounds about right." He laughs.

The movement is everything, the final goal is nothing.

The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure.

A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them.

I don't think I should penalize people who were doing their duty.

The kings of modern thought are dumb.

They didn't break me. I broke myself.

He was feeling totally lost, leaving his family and country for a place where he knew nobody and didn't even speak the language.

The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals. Hence his ability to pick out the right men and utilize combined energy