Quotes by Robinson Jeffers

“Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us”

“The deep dark-shining Pacific leans on the land Feeling his cold strength To the outmost margins”

“To feel greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the naturalBeauty, is the sole business of poetry.The rests diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.”

“A severed hand Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his history... for contemplation or in fact... Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the greatest beauty is Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe. Love that, not man Apart from that, or else you will share mans pitiful confusions, or drown in despair when his days darken.”

“It is good for man To try all changes, progress and corruption, powers, peace and anguish, not to go down the dinosaurs way Until all his capacities have been explored: and it is good for him To know that his needs and nature are no more changed, in fact, in ten thousand years than the beaks of eagles.”

“Shiva... is the only hunter that will ever catch the wild swan;The prey she will take last is the wild white swan of the beauty of things.Then she will be alone, pure destruction, achieved and supreme,Empty darkness under the death-tent wings.She will build a nest of the swans bones and hatch a new brood,Hang new heavens with new birds, all be renewed.”

“What but the wolfs tooth whittled so fine The fleet limbs of the antelope?What but fear winged the birds, and hunger Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawks head?”

“Pleasure is the carrot dangled to lead the ass to market; or the precipice.”

“Look how noble the world is, the lonely-flowing waters, the secret-keeping stones, the flowing sky.”

“[There are many other reasons for deciding to use Linux. But as I think about this question, Im reminded of a poem by Robinson Jeffers entitled] The Beauty of Things. ... reasons, but not the reason.”

“Why does insanity always twist the great answers? Because only tormented persons want truth.Man is an animal like other animals, wants food and success and women, not truth. Only if the mind Tortured by some interior tension has despaired of happiness: then it hates its life-cage and seeks further, And finds, if it is powerful enough. But instantly the private agony that made the search Muddles the finding. Then search for truth is foredoomed and frustrate? Only stained fragments? Until the mind has turned its love from itself and man, from parts to the whole.”

What is this thing called life? I believeThat the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,Only we do not call it so--I speak of the lifeThat oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energyMakes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things growFrom a chemical reaction?I think they were here already, I think the rocksAnd the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxieshave their various consciousness, all things are conscious;But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brainBring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glassTo concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearthFrom which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animalsBorn howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryardPrefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,Like the cells of a mans body making one being,They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.

You have perhaps heard some false reportsOn the subject of God. He is not dead; and he is not a fable. He is not mocked nor forgotten--Successfully. God is a lion that comes in the night. God is a hawk gliding among the stars--If all the stars and the earth, and the living flesh of the night that flows in between them, and whatever is beyond themWere that one bird. He has a bloody beak and harsh talons, he pounces and tears--And where is the German Reich? There alsoWill be prodigious America and world-owning China. I say that all hopes and empires will die like yours;Mankind will die, there will be no more fools; wisdom will die; the very stars will die;One fierce life lasts.

Ive changed my ways a little, I cannot nowRun with you in the evenings along the shore,Except in a kind of dream, and you, if you dream a moment,You see me there.

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in meOlder and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well Builds his monument mockingly; For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun Die blind and blacken to the heart: Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found The honey of peace in old poems.

We have to live like people in a web of knives, we mustnt reach out our hands or we get them gashed.

I learned that ruling poor mens hands is nothing. Ruling mens moneys a wedge in the world. But after Id split it open a crack I looked in and saw the trick inside it, the filthy nothing, the fooled and rotten faces of rich and successful men.

... He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.

The heads of strong old age are beautiful / Beyond all grace of youth