Vachel Lindsay Quotes

#1. It used to be that one poet in each generation performed poems in public. In the twenties, it was Vachel Lindsay, who sometimes dropped to his knees in the middle of a poem. Then Robert Frost took over, and made his living largely on the road.

Donald Hall

#2. 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?

Vachel Lindsay

#3. Not that they starve; but starve so dreamlessly,
Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap,
Not that they serve, but have no gods to serve,
Not that they die, but that they die like sheep.

Vachel Lindsay

#4. Let not young souls be smothered out
Before they do quaint deeds
And fully flaunt their pride.

Vachel Lindsay

#5. Christ is the sacrament of the invisible God - a sacrament that indicates presence. God is with us.

Pope John Paul II

#6. You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them.

Vachel Lindsay

#7. 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.

Vachel Lindsay

#8. Life is a loom, weaving illusion.

Vachel Lindsay

#9. A hint of sensual frustration roughened his voice.
And I will curse the gods along with them, Min. Some wild monsoon raged through me as I looked at you just now. It's left me rearranged inside, and I don't have a map.

Tessa Dare

#10. Because he says he can't stand you and you act like you can't stand him, and whenever a man and a woman behave like that toward each other, it usually means something's going on.

Helen Oyeyemi

#11. I'm haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls 'tomorrow's child,' asking why we didn't do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time.

Sylvia Earle

#12. Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you, Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you. Mumbo ... Jumbo ... will ... hoo-doo ... you.

Vachel Lindsay

#13. The crooning turns to a sunrise singing.

Vachel Lindsay

#14. 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.

Vachel Lindsay

#15. Authors and uncaptured criminals are the only people free from routine.

Vachel Lindsay

#16. To live in mankind is far more than to live in a name.

Vachel Lindsay

#17. They tried to get me-I got them first! (suicide note)

Vachel Lindsay

#18. Change the fabric of your own soul and your own visions, and you change all.

Vachel Lindsay

#19. Oh, 'The Thing' is one of my favorite movies of all time. That changed my life because I was like, 'I've got to do this.' Something that scared me that much? It was the first R-rated movie I ever saw, and I was like, 'Dude, I'm changed.'

Terry Crews

#20. My life is unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life is unkind, but I can vote for kindness.

Vachel Lindsay

#21. If you live in the countryside, you understand that hunting isn't just for toffs. It's for the farmers. It's for everyone's enjoyment.

Honeysuckle Weeks

#22. They tried to get me - I got them first!

Vachel Lindsay

#23. The only thing that a man may do that is new, is to write himself on human hearts.

Vachel Lindsay

#24. We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.

David Hockney

#25. 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.

Vachel Lindsay

#26. God lead us past the setting of the sun
To wizard islands, of august surprise;
God make our blunders wise.

Vachel Lindsay

#27. 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.

Vachel Lindsay

#28. woman's mouth opened and she brandished the rolling pin over her head like a Highland warrior. "PERVERRRRRRRT!" she screamed, and then she ran at him, clubbing him wherever she could reach. Edward

Cynthia Hand

#29. In their faces
plenty of them were handsome, but ruined
I've seen the remnants of who they almost succeeded in being but failed to be, before becoming themselves.

Richard Ford

#30. We left you there, lonely,
Beauty your power,
Wisdom your watchman,
To hold the clay tower.
from 'The Tale of the Tiger Tree

Vachel Lindsay

#31. I think nothing, at an objective level, is either right or wrong.

Karan Bajaj

#32. Reader, you forget that economics precedes religion; worship grew out of eating, not the other way around.

Anne Roiphe

#33. Factory windows are always broken
Other windows are let alone.
No one throws through the chapel-window
The bitter, snarling, derisive stone.

Vachel Lindsay

#34. Never be a cynic, even a gentle one. Never help out a sneer, even at the devil.

Vachel Lindsay

#35. Except the Christ be born again tonight
In dreams of all men, saints and sons of shame,
The world will never see his kingdom bright.

Vachel Lindsay