Quotes About Sappho

#1. But the act, called the sexual act, is not for the depositing of seed. It is for leaping off into the unknown, as from a cliff's edge, like Sappho into the sea.

D.H. Lawrence

#2. Fantastic truths perish slower ... Sappho's moon will survive the moon of Armstrong. Different computations are necessary.

Odysseas Elytis

#3. I think that Sappho expresses the orphaned part of ourselves. The orphaned part of ourselves that reaches out to passion for completion. That reaches out to motherhood for completion.

Erica Jong

#4. In Poetry class, Professor Sappho teaches us how to compose love ballads. She's a swell teacher and all but I'm not sure I understand her. She's always going on and on about her weekend trips with the other goddesses to the island of Lesbos.

Tai

#5. You searched through all my poets, From Sappho through to Auden, I saw the book fall from your hands, As you slowly died of boredom.

Nick Cave

#6. Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Eschylus, because we read his plays!

Robert Browning

#7. Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine:
A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.

Plato

#8. For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.

Cesare Pavese

#9. The extraordinarily facile and in literary terms long lived works tend to be about ordinary people. Even Sappho writes about the utterly insignificant . What art can do is make the extraordinary more ordinary and ordinary more extraordinary.

Robert Dessaix

#10. When these idiot rightwingers start complaining about poetry being political, I'm fond of reciting Sappho to them, who excluded men from her world. Why does she exclude them? Mostly because of their warmongering.

Sam Hamill

#11. George Eliot has the heart of Sappho; but the face, with the long proboscis, the protruding teeth of the Apocalyptic horse, betrayed animality.

George Meredith

#12. The inextinguishable lesbian spark. You've surely heard about it? The one that was first ignited at Lesbos, because Sappho was so sad every time a young woman left the academy that she wrote her a poem. Fancy being sad because someone leaves! Perverted, that's what I call it. Don't you?

Gerd Brantenberg

#13. You're Sappho, I'm Phaon, agreed.
But there's one thing still troubling me:
You don't know your way to the sea.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#14. I feel that women of my kind are a profound mistake. There have been few women poets of distinction, and, if we count only the suicides of Sappho, Lawrence Hope and Charlotte Mew, their despair rate has been very high.

Anna Wickham

#15. Culture is like the sum of special knowledge that accumulates in any large united family and is the common property of all its members. When we of the great Culture Family meet, we exchange reminiscences about Grandfather Homer, and that awful old Dr. Johnson, and Aunt Sappho, and poor Johnny Keats.

Aldous Huxley

#16. Sappho and Emily Dickinson are the only woman geniuses in poetic history.

Camille Paglia

#17. Nocturne

Midnight. The moon
has set, and the Pleiades.
The hours pass
and pass, yet still I lie alone.

Sappho

Sherod Santos

#18. Know thyself,' said Socrates.
Know thyself,' said Sappho, 'and make sure that the Church never finds out.

Jeanette Winterson

#19. The modern sensibility attempts to drain the contents of experience; these Greek poets strive to state the fact so poignantly that it becomes an ever-flowing spring as Sappho says, More real than real, more gold than gold.

Kenneth Rexroth

#20. A profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side shadows from the features of Sappho and Mrs. Siddons had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both.

Thomas Hardy

#21. No holy place existed without us then,
no woodland, no dance, no sound.
Beyond all hope, I prayed those timeless
days we spent might be made twice as long.
I prayed one word: I want.
Someone, I tell you, will remember us,
even in another time.

Sappho

#22. From all the offspring of the earth and heaven love is the most precious.

Sappho

#23. Their heart grew cold
they let their wings down

Sappho

#24. Sacredness and profanity and prayers and wishes: they're all held together by the broken limbs of this dead tree, raking the night sky with its blackened branches. We are so small, the two of us. The tree and sky are so large and grand. We could fail so easily, fall before we've begun to rise.

Elora Bishop

#25. I do not know what to do, my mind's in two.

Sappho

#26. Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me -
sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in

Sappho

#27. Eros harrows my heart: wild gales sweeping desolate mountains, uprooting oaks.

Sappho

#28. Eros seizes and shakes my very soul like the wind on the mountain
shaking ancient oaks.

Sappho

#29. We shall enjoy it
As for him who finds
fault, may silliness
and sorrow take him!

Sappho

#30. The evening star Is the most beautiful of all stars

Sappho

#31. I said: 'Go with my blessing if you go
Always remembering what we did. To me
You have meant everything, as you well know.

Sappho

#32. There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.

Sappho

#33. With his venom irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs, Love reptile-like strikes me down

Sappho

#34. The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.

Sappho

#35. Love shook my heart like a wind falling on oaks
on a mountain.

Sappho

#36. Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear.

Sappho

#37. Once again Love, that loosener of limbs,
bittersweet and inescapable, crawling thing,
seizes me.

Sappho

#38. And a sweet expression spreads over her fair face.

Sappho

#39. You may forget but
let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us

Sappho

#40. Although only breath, words which I speak are immortal.

Sappho

#41. In the crooks of your body, I find my religon.

Sappho

#42. In gold sandals / dawn like a thief / fell upon me.

Sappho

#43. Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.

Sappho

#44. for you beautiful ones my thought
is not changeable

Sappho

#45. Stand and face me, my love,
and scatter the grace in your eyes.

Sappho

#46. If I could, I would live forever in this moment. But no one can live in a moment, and time moves on.

Elora Bishop

#47. Love - bittersweet, irrepressible - loosens my limbs and I tremble.

Sappho

#48. ]sing to us
the one with violets in her lap
]mostly
]goes astray

Sappho

#49. Wealth without real worthiness
Is no good for the neighbourhood;
But their proper mixture
Is the summit of beatitude.

Sappho

#50. What cannot be said will be wept.

Sappho

#51. Because I prayed
this word:
I want

Sappho

#52. When they were tired
Night rained her
thick dark sleep
upon their eyes.

Sappho

#53. Love, like a mountain-wind upon an oak, falling upon me, shakes me leaf and bough.

Sappho

#54. The moon is setand the Pleiades; Middle ofthe night, time passes by,I lie alone.

Sappho

#55. In fact she herself once blamed me
Kyprogeneia
because I prayed
this word:
I want.

Sappho

#56. You are arrogant," says the cat, "and you are in love. Either one of these things alone might be overcome, but together, they make for a stubborn combination.

Elora Bishop

#57. He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will soon be fair also.

Sappho

#58. You came and I was crazy for you
and you cooled my mind that burned with longing

Sappho

#59. Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time

Sappho

#60. Dancing up the full moon
Round some fair new altar
Trample the soft blossoms of fine grass.

Sappho

#61. Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,
Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature ... .

Sappho

#62. When I look on you a moment, then I can speak no more, but my tongue falls silent, and at once a delicate flame courses beneath my skin, and with my eyes I see nothing, and my ears hum, and a wet sweat bathes me and a trembling seizes me all over.

Sappho

#63. Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.

Sappho

#64. The gorgeous man presents a gorgeous view;
The good man will in time be gorgeous, too.

Sappho

#65. No honey for me, if it comes with a bee.

Sappho

#66. but if you love us
choose a younger bed
for I cannot bear
to live with you when I am the older one

Sappho

#67. The Moon and Pleiades have set, / Midnight is nigh, / The time is passing, passing, yet / Alone I lie.

Sappho

#68. Come to me now and loosen me
from blunt agony. Labor
and fill my heart with fire. Stand by me
and be my ally.

Sappho

#69. My voice rings down through thousands of years to coil around your body and give you strength, you who have wept in direct sunlight, who have hungered in invisible chains, tremble to the cadence of my legacy: An army of lovers shall not fail.

Rita Mae Brown

#70. [I was dreaming of you but]
just then
Dawn, in her golden sandals
[woke me]

Sappho

#71. I have a daughter who reminds me of A marigold in bloom. Kle

Sappho

#72. Death is an ill; 'tis thus the Gods decide: / For had death been a boon, the Gods had died.

Sappho

#73. gathering flowers so very delicate a girl

Sappho

#74. For me, neither the honey nor the bee

Sappho

#75. To me the Muses truly gave / An envied and a happy lot: / E'en when I lie within the grave, / I cannot, shall not, be forgot.

Sappho

#76. And
Her soul! Her soul is consumed by this longing.

Sappho

#77. The moon has set In a bank of jet That fringes the Western sky, The pleiads seven Have sunk from heaven And the midnight hurries by; My hopes are flown And, alas! alone On my weary couch I lie.

Sappho

#78. The gleaming stars all about the shining moon
Hide their bright faces, when full-orbed and splendid
In the sky she floats, flooding the shadowed earth
with clear silver light.

Sappho

#79. Although only breath, words which I command are immortal.

Sappho

#80. neither for me honey nor the honey bee

Sappho

#81. Wealth without virtue is no harmless neighbor.

Sappho

#82. I want to tell you something but good taste
Restrains me

Sappho Van Lesbos

#83. All the while, believe me, I prayed our night would last twice as long.

Sappho

#84. You will have memories
Because of what we did back then
When we were new at this,
Yes, we did many things, then - all
Beautiful ...

Sappho

#85. I would not think to touch the sky with two arms

Sappho

#86. The moon has set
And the Pleiades.
Midnight.
I lie in bed alone.

Sappho

#87. ...but I say whatever / one loves, is

Sappho

#88. The touched heart madly stirs,
your laughter is water hurrying over pebbles -
every gesture is a proclamation,
every sound is speech ...

Sappho

#89. Would Jove appoint some flower to reign, in matchless beauty on the plain, the Rose (mankind will all agree). The Rose the queen of flowers should be.

Sappho

#90. Stars veil their beauty soon / Beside the glorious moon, / When her full silver light / Doth make the whole earth bright.

Sappho

#91. Without warning as a whirlwind swoops on an oak Love shakes my heart

Sappho

#92. Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor.

Sappho

#93. Whatever one loves most is beautiful.

Sappho

#94. For some the fairest thing on the dark earth is Thermopylae,
And the Spartan phalanx lowering lances to die.

Sappho

#95. May you sleep on the breast of your delicate friend

Sappho

#96. ]
]you will remember
]for we in our youth
did these things

yes many and beautiful things
]
]
]

Sappho

#97. May I write words more naked than flesh,
stronger than bone, more resilient than
sinew, sensitive than nerve.

Sappho

#98. Gracious your form and your eyes as honey : desire is poured upon your lovely face Aphrodite has honored you exceedingly ...

Sappho

#99. Eros once again limb-loosener whirls me sweetbitter, impossible to fight off, creature stealing up ... I don't know what I should do: two states of mind in me ...

Sappho

#100. Evening you gather back
all that dazzling dawn has put asunder:
you gather a lamb, gather a kid,
gather a child to its mother.

Sappho