Odes Quotes

Non omnis moriar, said Horace's Odes - I shall not wholly die. Yes, and he was right. As long as people remembered, then death was not complete. Only if there were nobody at all left to remember would death be complete. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth. ~ Victor Hugo

Voltaire was also there, fleeing a royal arrest warrant, and working as a kind of one-man eighteenth-century USO show during the siege, offering bons mots and brandy between bouts of battle and composing odes to the military men. The ~ Tom Reiss

Ah!' said Michel, tempted, 'you have modern poems?'
'Of course. For instance, Martillac's 'Electric Harmonies,' which won a prize last year from the Academic of Sciences, and Monsieur de Pulfasse's 'Meditations on Oxygen;' and we have the 'Poetic Parallelogram,' and even the 'Decarbonated Odes ... '
Michel couldn't bear hearing another word and found himself outside again, stupefied and overcome. Not even this tiny amount of art had escaped the pernicious influence of the age! Science, Chemistry, Mechanics had invaded the realm of poetry! 'And such things are read,' he murmured as he hurried through the streets, ' perhaps even bought! And signed by the authors and placed on the shelves marked 'Literature.' But not one copy of Balzac, not one work by Victor Hugo! Where can I find such things-where, if not the Library ... ~ Jules Verne

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
(Pluck the day [for it is ripe], trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.) ~ Horace

Doona fash, Sam." Calybrid, spying her scowl, hurried to balm the wound. "Ye're plenty fair."
"Aye," Locryn agreed.
"With eyes the color of the Alt Dubh Gorm."
"Sure, that too."
"Just… no one will write odes to yer breasts is all."
"On account of ye not having any," Locryn supplied, rather unnecessarily, in Samantha's opinion. ~ Kerrigan Byrne

So let there be prose.
There must be a divine prose for the Prophet to triumph ~ Mahmoud Darwish

I was a young, & had deep loves, & my heart would overflow with enthusiasm! And I mingled with the crowd, I mixed with my fellow men, speaking my thought out loud! And they gaped back at me, without understanding. And I withdrew from them, & they said to me: Arrogant one! And from time to time in my solitude, my loves, my repressed enthusiasms broke out into odes, conversation; & my companions laughed and used to point at me as a madman. So I suffered, doubted, cursed, & no one believed me sincere. It's as if this heart, once so full of strength & love were annihilated. ~ Comte De Lautreamont

And how about the "Daily Odes to the Benefactor"? Who can read them without bowing his head reverently before the selfless labor of this Number of Numbers? Or the terrible blood-red beauty of the "Flowers of Judicial Verdicts"? Or the immortal tragedy, "Lat for Work"? Or the bedside book of "Stanzas on Sexual Hygiene"? ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Yet, she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this
love; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than this; yet it is also beautiful and necessary. ~ Virginia Woolf

Keisha, my love," I said in my fey-est, gayest drawl, "your bum doesn't just look big, it is big. No, I take that back. It's enormous. Planets feel inferior beside it . Lesser bums are drawn into orbit around it. Last time it went dark, everyone said, Oh, is it an eclipse? And I told them, 'No, it's Keisha's bum blotting out the sun.' I could compose odes to the size of your bum."

Jude answering Keisha's question "Does my bum look big in this?"

Merrow, JL (2013-04-09). Slam! (Kindle Locations 35-38). ~ J.L. Merrow

The perturbations, anxieties, depravations, deaths, exceptions in the physical or moral order, spirit of negation, brutishness, hallucinations fostered by the will, torments, destruction, confusion, tears, insatiabilities, servitudes, delving imaginations, novels, the unexpected, the forbidden, the chemical singularities of the mysterious vulture which lies in wait for the carrion of some dead illusion, precocious & abortive experiences, the darkness of the mailed bug, the terrible monomania of pride, the inoculation of deep stupor, funeral orations, desires, betrayals, tyrannies, impieties, irritations, acrimonies, aggressive insults, madness, temper, reasoned terrors, strange inquietudes which the reader would prefer not to experience , cants, nervous disorders, bleeding ordeals that drive logic at bay, exaggerations, the absence of sincerity, bores, platitudes, the somber, the lugubrious, childbirths worse than murders, passions, romancers at the Courts of Assize, tragedies,-odes, melodramas, extremes forever presented, reason hissed at with impunity, odor of hens steeped in water, nausea, frogs, devilfish, sharks, simoon of the deserts, that which is somnambulistic, squint-eyed, nocturnal, somniferous, noctambulistic, viscous, equivocal, consumptive, spasmodic, aphrodisiac, anemic, one-eyed, hermaphroditic, bastard, albino, pederast, phenomena of the aquarium, & the bearded woman, hours surfeited with gloomy discouragement, fantasies, acrimonies, monsters, demoral ~ Comte De Lautreamont

Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them. ~ Erin Morgenstern

In adversity remember to keep an even mind. ~ Horace

Creativity is an ode to life. It is not a form of entertainment. It is a form of joy. ~ Wynn Bullock

A poem with grandly conceived and executed stanzas, such as one of Keats's odes, should be like an enfilade of rooms in a palace: one proceeds, with eager anticipation, from room to room. ~ James Fenton

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for its radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves and should turn them into odes of self congratulation on the excellence of the human mind. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

These shirts are perfectly serviceable."
I rolled my eyes. "Serviceable? Anyan, I get it that you're utilitarian. If we were in the old country you'd write odes to factories. You'd sing the praises of the communal farm while you gnawed on a perfectly 'serviceable' radish. But this is the new millennium. In America. Buy a button-up. ~ Nicole Peeler

All human odes are essentially one. "My life: what I stole from history, and how I live with it." Personally ~ Barbara Kingsolver

No, I chose the name Jane Seymour because I was doing my first film, 'Ode to Lovely War,' and one of the top agents in England spotted me dancing in the chorus. I was a singer and dancer in that movie with Maggie Smith, um, and he told me he couldn't sell me as Joyce Penelope Willomena Frankenburger. ~ Jane Seymour

The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver ... Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother. ~ Louise Bourgeois

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination. ~ Richard Russo

The key to faking deaths is a fine appreciation of arterial spray patterns. I have found that blood bags work very well at simulating spray with a strategically poked hole; apply pressure to the bottom of the bag, practice a bit, and before long you will be able to write stories of carnage and odes to gore.
A small fan brush-the sort that one dude used to paint happy little trees-can paint a picture of blunt force spatters if you flick the surface properly. You could even talk to yourself, as that painter did, while you flick blood around: And maybe over here we have a nice stab wound. And, I don't know, maybe there's a few more back over here. Multiple stab wounds. It doesn't matter, whatever you feel like. ~ Kevin Hearne

Stop staring at my dick," he growled.
Oh, yes it was definitely an illusion. "Barrons loved me staring at his dick,"I informed it. "he would have been happy if I'd stared at his dick all day long, composing odes to its perfection. ~ Karen Marie Moning

This universe an old enchantment guards; Its objects are carved cups of World-Delight Whose charmed wine is some deep soul's rapture-drink: The All-Wonderful has packed heaven with his dreams, He has made blank ancient Space his marvel-house; He spilled his spirit into Matter's signs: His fires of grandeur burn in the great sun, He glides through heaven shimmering in the moon; He is beauty carolling in the fields of sound; He chants the stanzas of the odes of Wind; He is silence watching in the stars at night; He wakes at dawn and calls from every bough, Lies stunned in the stone and dreams in flower and tree. ~ Sri Aurobindo

If you would seek to find yourself
look not in the mirror
for there is but a shadow there'
A stranger ...
SILENIUS, ODES TO TRUTH ~ Sidney Sheldon

This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity ~ Voltaire

In the First World War we lost in all about three million killed. In the Second we lost twenty million (so Khrushchev said; according to Stalin it was only seven million. Was Nikita being too generous? Or couldn't Iosif keep track of his capital?) All those odes! All those obelisks and eternal flames! Those novels and poems! For a quarter of a century all Soviet literature has been drunk on that blood! ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas
regumque turres.

-

Pale Death kicks in the huts of paupers
just as it does the towers of kings,

(Odes I, 4) ~ Horatius

A classic lecture, rich in sentiment, With scraps of thundrous Epic lilted out By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long, That on the stretched forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

Sometimes, even those whom we consider as our close friends may betray us so easily, in a moment when we do not even expect it. Such is the truth of life, despite so many eloquent odes humanity dedicated to friendship. ~ Sahara Sanders

He'll never compose whole odes to my beauty and grace. He'll never show up with a boom box to reenact Say Anything outside my window. He'll never drive over at three a.m. because I'm sick and can't sleep and just want to feel his arms around me. ~ Abby McDonald

To be a woman and a writer is double mischief, for the world will slight her who slights "the servile house," and who would rather make odes than beds. ~ Dilys Laing

Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets ... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Mami was born en La Capital, in a barrio of thirst buckets/who wrote odes to her legs,/but the only man Mami wanted/was nailed to a cross. ~ Elizabeth Acevedo

Some pious souls are troubled because they cannot at all times, or often, use, in its joyous import, the language of this Psalm. Such should remember that David, though he lived long, never wrote but one twenty-third Psalm. Some of his odes do indeed express as lively a faith as this, and faith can walk in darkness. But where else do we find a whole Psalm expressive of personal confidence, joy, and triumph, from beginning to end? God's people have their seasons of darkness and their times of rejoicing. ~ William Swan Plumer

Snow White Makes a Plea to the Witch

Light a candle.
Feed your scrawny cat.
Polish your dark house.
Buy a new hat.

Write odes, darn socks.
Repair your crumbling stoop.
Put a smile on your face.
Pour out that sour soup.

Move away from the mines,
Far out by the bay.
And I beg you, please,
Throw that mirror away. ~ Jane Yolen

A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seedword is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but and if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb. Good poems, therefore, are always close to banality, over which, however, they tower like precipices. ~ Alasdair Gray

Keatsian odes or reflective elegies which had formed the backbone of his early work ('At Grass', 'Church Going', 'An Arundel Tomb', 'The Whitsun Weddings', 'Here', 'Dockery and Son'). Now he resumed the sequence, and over the next six years would complete four more, all focused directly or indirectly on the theme of death: 'The Building', 'The Old Fools', 'Show Saturday' and finally 'Aubade'. ~ James Booth

What Exile from himself can flee?[a] To zones though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of Life - the Demon Thought.[b] [a] [Compare Horace, Odes, II. xvi. 19, 20. [b] Compare Prior's Solomon, bk. iii. lines 85, 86: 'In the remotest wood and lonely grot Certain to meet that worst of evils - thought.' ~ George Gordon Byron