Top 100 Sappho's Quotes
#1. Fantastic truths perish slower ... Sappho's moon will survive the moon of Armstrong. Different computations are necessary.
#2. 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?
#3. 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 ...
#4. All the while, believe me, I prayed our night would last twice as long.
#5. I want to tell you something but good taste
Restrains me
#6. Wealth without virtue is no harmless neighbor.
#7. neither for me honey nor the honey bee
#8. Although only breath, words which I command are immortal.
#9. 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.
#10. 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.
#11. And
Her soul! Her soul is consumed by this longing.
#12. 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.
#13. George Eliot has the heart of Sappho; but the face, with the long proboscis, the protruding teeth of the Apocalyptic horse, betrayed animality.
#14. For me, neither the honey nor the bee
#15. gathering flowers so very delicate a girl
#16. Death is an ill; 'tis thus the Gods decide: / For had death been a boon, the Gods had died.
#17. I have a daughter who reminds me of A marigold in bloom. Kle
#18. [I was dreaming of you but]
just then
Dawn, in her golden sandals
[woke me]
#19. 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.
#20. Come to me now and loosen me
from blunt agony. Labor
and fill my heart with fire. Stand by me
and be my ally.
#21. The Moon and Pleiades have set, / Midnight is nigh, / The time is passing, passing, yet / Alone I lie.
#22. but if you love us
choose a younger bed
for I cannot bear
to live with you when I am the older one
#23. No honey for me, if it comes with a bee.
#24. The gorgeous man presents a gorgeous view;
The good man will in time be gorgeous, too.
#25. Beauty endures only for as long as it can be seen; goodness, beautiful today, will remain so tomorrow.
#26. 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.
#27. 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.
#28. It's in my blood, as magic is in yours." His mouth is still smiling, but his tone is somber. "I couldn't stop writing even if I wanted to.
#29. Some say an army of horsemen, or infantry,
A fleet of ships is the fairest thing
On the face of the black earth, but I say
It's what one loves.
#30. When you take advice from a cat, there are always consequences.
#31. Do you prefer him or her? Either one's cool-I'm genderfluid.
#32. 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.
#33. Hesperus bringing together All that the morning star scattered.
#34. Evening you gather back
all that dazzling dawn has put asunder:
you gather a lamb, gather a kid,
gather a child to its mother.
#35. 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 ...
#36. Gracious your form and your eyes as honey : desire is poured upon your lovely face Aphrodite has honored you exceedingly ...
#37. May I write words more naked than flesh,
stronger than bone, more resilient than
sinew, sensitive than nerve.
#38. ]
]you will remember
]for we in our youth
did these things
yes many and beautiful things
]
]
]
#39. May you sleep on the breast of your delicate friend
#40. Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,
Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature ... .
#41. For some the fairest thing on the dark earth is Thermopylae,
And the Spartan phalanx lowering lances to die.
#42. Whatever one loves most is beautiful.
#43. Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor.
#44. You're Sappho, I'm Phaon, agreed.
But there's one thing still troubling me:
You don't know your way to the sea.
#45. Without warning as a whirlwind swoops on an oak Love shakes my heart
#46. Stars veil their beauty soon / Beside the glorious moon, / When her full silver light / Doth make the whole earth bright.
#47. 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.
#48. The touched heart madly stirs,
your laughter is water hurrying over pebbles -
every gesture is a proclamation,
every sound is speech ...
#49. ...but I say whatever / one loves, is
#50. The moon has set
And the Pleiades.
Midnight.
I lie in bed alone.
#51. I would not think to touch the sky with two arms
#52. 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.
#53. Sappho survives, because we sing her songs; And Eschylus, because we read his plays!
#54. 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.
#55. You may forget but
let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us
#56. And a sweet expression spreads over her fair face.
#57. Once again Love, that loosener of limbs,
bittersweet and inescapable, crawling thing,
seizes me.
#58. Mere air, these words, but delicious to hear.
#59. 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.
#60. Love shook my heart like a wind falling on oaks
on a mountain.
#61. The moon has set, and the Pleiades; it is midnight, and time passes, and I sleep alone.
#62. With his venom irresistible and bittersweet that loosener of limbs, Love reptile-like strikes me down
#63. There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.
#64. I said: 'Go with my blessing if you go
Always remembering what we did. To me
You have meant everything, as you well know.
#65. Although only breath, words which I speak are immortal.
#66. The evening star Is the most beautiful of all stars
#67. We shall enjoy it
As for him who finds
fault, may silliness
and sorrow take him!
#68. Eros seizes and shakes my very soul like the wind on the mountain
shaking ancient oaks.
#69. Eros harrows my heart: wild gales sweeping desolate mountains, uprooting oaks.
#70. Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me -
sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in
#71. I do not know what to do, my mind's in two.
#72. 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.
#73. Their heart grew cold
they let their wings down
#74. 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.
#75. From all the offspring of the earth and heaven love is the most precious.
#76. 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.
#77. Wealth without real worthiness
Is no good for the neighbourhood;
But their proper mixture
Is the summit of beatitude.
#78. Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time
#79. You came and I was crazy for you
and you cooled my mind that burned with longing
#80. He who is fair to look upon is good, and he who is good will soon be fair also.
#81. 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.
#82. 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.
#83. In fact she herself once blamed me
Kyprogeneia
because I prayed
this word:
I want.
#84. The moon is setand the Pleiades; Middle ofthe night, time passes by,I lie alone.
#85. Love, like a mountain-wind upon an oak, falling upon me, shakes me leaf and bough.
#86. When they were tired
Night rained her
thick dark sleep
upon their eyes.
#87. Because I prayed
this word:
I want
#88. What cannot be said will be wept.
#89. Dancing up the full moon
Round some fair new altar
Trample the soft blossoms of fine grass.
#90. ]sing to us
the one with violets in her lap
]mostly
]goes astray
#91. 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.
#92. Love - bittersweet, irrepressible - loosens my limbs and I tremble.
#93. If I could, I would live forever in this moment. But no one can live in a moment, and time moves on.
#94. Stand and face me, my love,
and scatter the grace in your eyes.
#95. For women, history does not exist. Murasaki, Sappho, and Madame Lafayette might be their own contemporaries.
#96. for you beautiful ones my thought
is not changeable
#97. Some thoughtlessly proclaim the Muses nine:
A tenth is Sappho, maid divine.
#98. Raise high the roof beam, carpenters. Like Ares comes the bridegroom, taller far than a tall man.
#99. In gold sandals / dawn like a thief / fell upon me.
#100. In the crooks of your body, I find my religon.
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