The Infinite Library

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.”

“My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.”

“I went on all over the States, ranting poems to enthusiastic audiences that, the week before, had been equally enthusiastic about lectures on Railway Development or the Modern Turkish Essay.”

“Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

“Though lovers be lost, love shall not.”

“In my craft or sullen art Exercised in the still night When only the moon rages And the lovers lie abed With all their griefs in their arms, I labour by singing light Not for ambition or bread Or the strut and trade of charms On the ivory stages But for the common wages Of their most secret heart. Not for the proud man apart From the raging moon I write On these spindrift pages Nor for the towering dead With their nightingales and psalms But for the lovers, their arms Round the griefs of the ages, Who pay no praise or wages Nor heed my craft or art.”

“Washington isn't a city, it's an abstraction.”

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

“Whatever talents I possess may suddenly diminish or suddenly increase. I can with ease become an ordinary fool. I may be one now. But it doesn't do to upset one's own vanity.”

“I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don't care that we don't.”

“Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.”

“And death shall have no dominion. Under the windings of the sea They lying long shall not die windily; Twisting on racks when sinews give way, Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break; Faith in their hands shall snap in two, And the unicorn evils run them through; Split all ends up they shan't crack; And death shall have no dominion.”

“Every device there is in language is there to be used, if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twistings and convolutions of words, the inventions and contrivances, are all part of the joy that is part of the painful, voluntary work.”

“Some people react physically to the magic of poetry, to the moments, that is, of authentic revelation, of the communication, the sharing, at its highest level...A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

“[I'm]a freak user of words, not a poet.”

“Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name.”

“As I read more and more - and it was not all verse, by any means - my love for the real life of words increased until I knew that I must live with them and in them, always. I knew, in fact, that I must be a writer of words, and nothing else.”

“On No Work of Words On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft: To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven, The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft. To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark. To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.”

“I've just had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that's the record.”

“Poetry is not the most important thing in life... I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.”

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

“An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do.”

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”

“There is only one position for an artist anywhere; and that is upright.”

“I have never sat down and studied the Bible, never consciously echoed its language, and am, in reality, as ignorant of it as most brought-up Christians. All of the Bible that I use in my work is remembered from childhood and is the common property of all who were brought up in English-speaking communities.”

“I sang in my chains like the sea”

“These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I'd be a damn' fool if they weren't.”

“The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.”

“A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.”

“Don't be too harsh to these poems until they're typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.”

“When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”

“Come on up, boys -I'm dead.”

“This poem has been called obscure. I refuse to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence, or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime, it is more compressed.”

“Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

“No honest writer today can possibly avoid being influenced by Freud through his pioneering work into the Unconscious and by the influence of those discoveries on the scientific, philosophic, and artistic work of his contemporaries: but not, by any means, necessarily through Freud's own writing.”

“Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.”

“These poems, with all their crudities, doubts and confusions, are written for the love of man and in Praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't.”

“An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do.”

“To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice. Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas. If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.” ― Dylan Thomas, Collected Poems”