Elizabeth Bishop quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Elizabeth Bishop

Elizabeth Bishop Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Elizabeth Bishop on Wise Famous Quotes.

Oh, must we dream our dreams
and have them, too?

You are you and you are going to be YOU forever.

Ports are necessities, like postage stamps or soap, but they seldom seem to care what impressions they make.

I knew that nothing stranger
had ever happened, that nothing
stranger could ever happen.

Everything only connected by "and" and "and.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!

I leave a lovely opalescent ribbon: I know this.

Democracy in the contemporary world demands, among other things, an educated and informed people.

I was made at right angles to the world
and I see it so. I can only see it so.

Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master.

One has to commit a painting,' said Degas,
'the way one commits a crime.

And as to experience-well, think how little some good poets have had, or how much some bad ones have.

Should we have stayed home and thought of here?

The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing.

I've never written the things I'd like to write that I've admired all my life. Maybe one never does.

...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do..

The pigs stuck out their little feet and snored.

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seemed filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster

The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.

Heaven is not like flying or swimming, but has something to do with blackness and a strong glare.

Being a poet is one of the unhealthier jobs
no regular hours, so many temptations!

Icebergs behoove the soul (both being self-made from elements least visible) to see themselves: fleshed, fair, erected, indivisible.

Screen porch in a tree.

What childishness is it that while there's breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around?

Someone loves us all.

If after I read a poem the world looks like that poem for 24 hours or so I'm sure it's a good one - and the same goes for paintings.

Hoping to live days of greater happiness, I forget that days of less happiness are passing by.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.

Something needn't be large to be good.

Time to plant tears, says the almanac.
The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove
and the child draws another inscrutable house.

All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.

Love's the son
stood stammering elocution
while the poor ship in flames went down

Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West.
More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

Insomnia"

perhaps she's a daytime sleeper.

Since we do float on an unknown sea, I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way carefully; who knows what may depend on it?