"In this life to die is nothing new, but of course, there is as little novelty in living."
- Sergei Yesenin
"Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice."
- Walt Whitman
"If poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all."
- John Keats
"In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own."
- Anna Quindlen (How Reading Changed My Life)
"There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense."
- Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Austen
“…Throughout the ages men have been moved by great songs and roused by dramatic poems. Long before scribes wrote them down, primitive bards…celebrated heroic battles and glorified gallant deeds in verse…Poems which tell stories have always been popular because they reach down into the heart of the folk…Ancient singers put the history of the period into galloping measures and ringing rhymes; they embroidered legends with highly colored figures and turned the news of the day into literture.
“The poems in this book span several centuries; many of them are among the glories of English literature. But the emphasis here is on the poem, not on the poet; it is on the power and persuasion of the tale rather than on the reputation of the writer. Here is a book of narratives in many keys, mingling the classic and the contemporary, the popular and the not-yet-familiar—for readers who respond to romance, humor, and adventure.”
— Introduction by Lewis Untermeyer
Best 50 cents I’ve spent.