The collection / 16 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

16 results · Page 1 of 1Play this collection ▷

01Undated

Surely--But I am very off from that.From surely. From indeed. From the decent arrowthat was my clean naivete and my faith.This morning, men deliver wounds and death.They will deliver death and wounds tomorrow.And I doubt all. You. Or a violet.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

02Undated

She was afraid to suggest to him that to most people, nothing "happens." That most people merely live from day to day until they die. That, after he had been dead a year, doubtless fewer than five people would think of him oftener than once a year. That there might even come a year when no one on earth would think of him at all.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

03Undated

Live not for Battles Won.Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

04Undated

Poetry is life distilled.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

05Undated

Exhaust the little moment. Soon it dies.And be it gash or gold it will not comeAgain in this identical disguise.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

06Undated

We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

07Undated

Say to them,say to the down-keepers,the sun-slappers,the self-soilers,the harmony-hushers,"Even if you are not ready for dayit cannot always be night."You will be right.For that is the hard home-run.Live not for battles won.Live not for the-end-of-the-song.Live in the along.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

08Undated

Writing is a delicious agony.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

09Undated

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

10Undated

Books are meat and medicineand flame and flight and flowersteel, stitch, cloud and clout,and drumbeats on the air.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

11Undated

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell I hold my honey and I store my bread In little jars and cabinets of my will. I label clearly, and each latch and lid I bid, Be firm till I return from hell. I am very hungry. I am incomplete. And none can tell when I may dine again. No man can give me any word but Wait, The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in; Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt Drag out to their last dregs and I resume On such legs as are left me, in such heart As I can manage, remember to go home, My taste will not have turned insensitive To honey and bread old purity could love.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

12Undated

One reason that cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

13Undated

It is brave to be involved.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

14Undated

When you love a man, he becomes more than a body. His physical limbs expand, and his outline recedes, vanishes. He is rich and sweet and right. He is part of the world, the atmosphere, the blue sky and the blue water.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

15Undated

Art hurts. Art urges voyages - and it is easier to stay at home.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote

16Undated

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

Gwendolyn Brooks / quote