Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The soul is not a soul, Has no secret, is small, and it fits Its hollow perfectly: its room, our moment of attention.
John Ashbery
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
John Ashbery
Age: 90 †
Born: 1927
Born: July 28
Died: 2017
Died: September 3
Journalist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Rochester
New York
G'on Ashberi
John Ashberry
Jonas Barry
Jon Asshuberī
John Lawrence Ashbery
John Ashbery
Moment
Hollow
Moments
Perfectly
Soul
Fit
Life
Room
Rooms
Small
Secret
Attention
Fits
More quotes by John Ashbery
Where then shall hope and fear their objects find?
John Ashbery
And we may be led, then, upward through more Powerful forms of poetry, past columns With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference. Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real.
John Ashbery
Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
John Ashbery
Life is not at all what you might think it to be A simple tale where each thing has its history It's much more than its scuffle and anything goes Both evil and good, subject to the same laws.
John Ashbery
Extreme patience and persistence are required, Yet everybody succeeds at this before being handed The surprise box lunch of the rest of his life.
John Ashbery
The winter does what it can for its children.
John Ashbery
And just as there are no words for the surface, that is, No words to say what it really is, that it is not Superficial but a visible core, then there is No way out of the problem of pathos vs. experience.
John Ashbery
Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen.
John Ashbery
Things can harden meaningfully in the moment of indecision
John Ashbery
Reading is a pleasure, but to finish reading, to come to the blank space at the end, is also a pleasure.
John Ashbery
Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.
John Ashbery
A perfect example of the new republic's urge to drape itself with the togas of classical respectability.
John Ashbery
I don't look on poetry as closed works. I feel they're going on all the time in my head and I occasionally snip off a length.
John Ashbery
Some certified nut Will try to tell you it's poetry, (It's extraordinary, it makes a great deal of sense) But watch out or he'll start with some New notion or other.
John Ashbery
It is written in the Book of Usable Minutes That all things have their center in their dying.
John Ashbery
The mind Is so hospitable, taking in everything Like boarders, and you don't see until It's all over how little there was to learn Once the stench of knowledge has dissipated.
John Ashbery
The sun fades like the spreading Of a peacock's tail, as though twilight Might be read as a warning to those desperate For easy solutions.
John Ashbery
Just keep playing, mastering as you do the step Into disorder this one meant. Don't you see It's all we can do? Meanwhile, great fires Arise, as of haystacks aflame. The dial has been set And that's ominous, but all your graciousness in living Conspires with it, now that this is our home: A place to be from, and have people ask about.
John Ashbery
Part of the strength of Pollock and Rothko's art, in fact, is this doubt as to whether art may be there at all.
John Ashbery
The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?
John Ashbery