Vachel Lindsay Quotes
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I am unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life's unkind, but I can vote for kindness. I, the unloving, say life should be lovely. I, that am blind, cry out against my blindness.
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There were three great Virginia poets in the very beginning - George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson. 'What!' you say. 'We do not even know the names of their publishers. They were not poets!' Well, how do you know? Did you ever really read them? What do you know about it? Their very names will breathe poetry forever.
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You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.
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To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.
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The fact that you can write verse is in itself a certificate that you can write prose.
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Our Christmas shall be rare at dawning there, And each shall find his brother fair, Like a little child within: All hearts of the earth shall find new birth And wake, no more to sin.
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I am still making my living reciting my verses for crowds who refuse to buy my books. I must do this, as all American rhymers must, however sick I may be of the sound of my own voice.
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I will not be a slave to my yesterday. I am creator, not a parrot.
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Poetry is for the inner ear
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Oh, I have walked in Kansas Through many a harvest field, And piled the sheaves of glory there And down the wild rows reeled: Each sheaf a little yellow sun, A heap of hot-rayed gold; Each binder like Creation's hand To mold suns, as of old.
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This is the sin against the Holy Ghost: - To speak of bloody power as right divine, And call on God to guard each vile chief's house, And for such chiefs, turn men to wolves and swine.
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I think that my first poetic impulse is for music; second a definite conception with the ring of the universe...
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Factory windows are always brokenOther windows are let alone.No one throws through the chapel-windowThe bitter, snarling, derisive stone.
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Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo . . . Jumbo . . . will . . . hoo-doo . . . you.
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How can we help students to understand that the tragedy of life is not death; the tragedy is to die with commitments undefined and convictions undeclared and service unfulfilled?
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I think on death as the apparent end of the illusions that encompass us. They all have a sudden and unexpected end, that challenges any faith we have pinned to their worth.