Dylan Thomas

"Do not go gentle into that good night, 
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

- 'Do not go gentle into that good night' by Dylan Thomas

Havelock Ellis

"Thinking in its lower grades, is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry."

- Havelock Ellis, psychologist

William Wordsworth

"That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."

- 'Tintern Abbey' by William Wordsworth

Patrick Kavanagh

"We must record love's mystery without claptrap,
Snatch out of time the passionate transitory"

- 'The Hospital' by Patrick Kavanagh

Robert Frost

"A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom."

- Robert Frost, poet

Graham Greene

"I can believe only in love that strikes suddenly out of a clear sky:
I do not believe in the slow germination of friendship
Or one that asks 'why?'
Because our love came savagely, suddenly, like an actor of war,
I cannot conceive a love that rises gently and subsides without a scar."

- Graham Greene, author, playwright, literary critic

Salman Rushdie

"A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep."

- Salman Rushdie, author

William Ernest Henley

"It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul."

- 'Invictus' by William Ernest Henley

Alexander Pope

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast
Man never Is, but always To be blest
The soul, uneasy and confin'd from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come."

- 'An Essay On Man' by Alexander Pope

Plato

"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet."

- Plato, ancient Greek philosopher and author

Patrick Kavanagh

"Nothing whatever is by love debarred"

- 'The Hospital' by Patrick Kavanagh

Maybe surprisingly, Kavanagh wrote this poem about "the functional ward of a chest hospital." Kavanagh describes its plainness, ugliness, even - "an art lover's woe" but it was here that Kavanagh was treated for lung cancer and saved, and thus, despite his preconceptions he "fell in love" with the hospital. In my opinon, that's Kavanagh's greatest attribute - his ability to see beauty where others cannot.

W. B. Yeats

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity"

- 'The Second Coming' by W. B. Yeats

Feeling a little bit apocalyptic today. If you are too, read this poem. Terrifying.

W. B. Yeats

"O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity."

- 'Sailing To Byzantium' by W. B. Yeats

In this poem, Yeats is despairing of his ageing body, and he yearns to be immortalised in art, to be taken into "the artifice of eternity," that is, for him, art. I was particularly struck by this quote, I think you really feel his desperation to escape his own frail humanity, as he begs - "Consume my heart away, sick with desire and fastened to a dying animal, it knows not what it is." - he is searching for a way to make himself - his heart - eternal. He does not want to be merely human, put simply, he does not want to die - and I think that is the most human desire of all.

William Wordsworth

"If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year;
And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine
God being with thee when we know it not."

- 'It is a beauteous evening, calm and free' by William Wordsworth

Wordsworth wrote this poem about his daughter. Being, as he was, so awestruck by nature, he found it hard to comprehend his daughter's apparent lack of connection to it, lack of appreciation for the divine in the physical. However, although she was "untouched by solemn thought," Wordsworth believes that she has a deeper connection with God, as she is so young, so innocent, so pure. Although, she seems to have no conscious connection to God, in reality, her very being is an expression of God.

Emily Dickinson

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes -
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?"

- 'After great pain, a formal feeling comes' by Emily Dickinson

William Wordsworth

"O'er my thoughts
There hung a darkness, call it solitude
Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes
Remained, no pleasant images of trees,
Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields;
But huge and mighty forms, that do not live
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams."

- 'The Stolen Boat' from 'The Prelude' by William Wordsworth

W. B. Yeats

"We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare."

- 'The Stare's Nest by my Window' from 'Meditations in the Time of Civil War' by W. B. Yeats

In this poem, Yeats is calling for all of Ireland to come together instead of fighting amongst each other, written as it was during the Civil War. In this particular quote, Yeats is speaking of the "fantasies" of freedom and independence that, although noble in intent, have made the heart "brutal" in its attempts to make these visions reality. Yeats is saying that people have become more focused on their opposition in the Civil War than on their love of Ireland itself. Yeats is appealing to the Irish people to "build" rather than break, now that they finally have their independence.

Robert Frost

"Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better."

- 'Birches' by Robert Frost

Emily Dickinson

"Heavenly Hurt, it gives us -
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are -"

- 'There's a certain Slant of light' by Emily Dickinson

Patrick Kavanagh

"O I loved too much and by such by such is happiness thrown away"

- 'On Raglan Road' by Patrick Kavanagh