John Ashbery Quotes About Life

Quotes about: Life

• Life is beautiful. He who reads that
  As in the window of some distant, speeding train
  Knows what he wants, and what will befall.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

• Then let yourself love all that you take delight in
  Accept yourself whole, accept the heritage
  That shaped you and is passed on from age to age
  Down to your entity. Remain mysterious;
  Rather than be pure, accept yourself as numerous.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Self Love

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

• There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Army

  1989 In the International Herald Tribune, 2 Oct.

• This whole moment is the groin
  Of a borborygmic giant who even now
  Is rolling over on us in his sleep.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Sleep

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

• You stupefied me. We waxed,
  Carnivores, late and alight
  In the beaded winter. All was ominous, luminous.

  John Ashbery

  Life, Winter, Carnivores

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

• The gray glaze of the past attacks all know-how...

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Past

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

• But always and sometimes questioning the old modes
  And the new wondering, the poem, growing up through the floor,
  Standing tall in tubers, invading and smashing the ritual
  Parlor, demands to be met on its own terms now,
  Now that the preliminary negotiations are at last over.

  John Ashbery

  Life, Growing Up, Demand

  John Ashbery (1985). “A Wave: Poems”, p.79, Ardent Media

• Expecting rain, the profile of a day Wears its soul like a hat.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Rain

  John Ashbery (1981). “Shadow train: poems”, Viking Adult

• Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you, At incredible speed, traveling day and night.

  John Ashbery

  Life, Night, Incredibles

  John Ashbery (1985). “A Wave: Poems”, p.1, Ardent Media

• 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

  Inspirational, Life, Thinking

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

• To the poet as a basement quilt, but perhaps To some reader a latticework of regrets.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Quilts

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

• 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

  Life, Soul, Secret

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

• 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

  Inspirational, Life, Twilight

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

• Will occur as time grows more open about it.

  John Ashbery

  Life, Grows

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

• The soul establishes itself. But how far can it swim out through the eyes And still return safely to its nest?

  John Ashbery

  Life, Eye, Swim

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

• All beauty, resonance, integrity,
  Exist by deprivation or logic
  Of strange position.

  John Ashbery

  Inspirational, Life, Integrity

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

• The ellipse is as aimless as that,
  Stretching invisibly into the future so as to reappear
  In our present. Its flexing is its account,
  Return to the point of no return.

  John Ashbery

  Life, Return, Flexing

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”, Penguin Group USA

• We are prisoners of the world's demented sink.
  The soft enchantments of our years of innocence
  Are harvested by accredited experience
  Our fondest memories soon turn to poison
  And only oblivion remains in season.

  John Ashbery

  Life, Memories, Years

  John Ashbery (1986). “Selected Poems”

• 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

  Life, Patience, Growing Up

  John Ashbery (1981). “Shadow train: poems”, Viking Adult

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