I had a lovers quarrel with the world.
What we live by we die by.
The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I'm against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.
I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way.
The jury consist of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.
I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.
And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.
The world is full of willing people; some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.
The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.
You can be a little ungrammatical if you come from the right part of the country.
The best way out is always through.
Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.
You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.
The artist in me cries out for design.
Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.
Space ails us moderns: we are sick with space.
The only certain freedom's in departure.
They would not find me changed from him they knew - only more sure of all I thought was true.
Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.
Freedom lies in being bold.
The middle of the road is where the white line is - and that's the worst place to drive.
If you don't know how great this country is, I know someone who does; Russia.
The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
I'd just as soon play tennis with the net down.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.