Sappho Quotes

I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp
brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure. ~ Anne Carson

For me, neither the honey nor the bee ~ Sappho

I use to weave crowns ~ Sappho

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. ~ Sappho

Love is a cunning weaver of fantasies and fables. ~ Sappho

I can reveal to you that I wished to die -
For with much weeping she left me
Saying: "Sappho - what suffering is ours!
For it is against my will that I leave you."
In answer, I said: "Go, happily remembering me
For you know what we shared and pursued -
If not, I wish you to see again our [ former joys ] ...
The many braids of rose and violet you [ wreathed ]
Around yourself at my side
And the many garlands of flowers
With which you adorned your soft neck:
With royal oils from [ fresh flowers ]
You anointed [ yourself ]
And on soft beds fulfilled your longing
[ For me ] ... ~ Sappho

Hesperus bringing together All that the morning star scattered. ~ Sappho

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

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

The Unchanging
Sun-swept beaches with a light wind blowing
From the immense blue circle of the sea,
And the soft thunder where long waves whiten
These were the same for Sappho as for me.
Two thousand years - much has gone by forever,
Change takes the gods and ships and speech of men
But here on the beaches that time passes over
The heart aches now as then. ~ Sara Teasdale

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

Whoever he is who opposite you
sits and listens close
to your sweet speaking
and lovely laughing – oh it
puts the heart in my chest on wings
for when I look at you, even a moment, no speaking
is left in me
no: tongue breaks and thin
fire is racing under skin
and in eyes no sight and drumming
fills ears
and cold sweat holds me and shaking
grips me all, greener than grass ~ Sappho

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

The moon has set
And the Pleiades.
Midnight.
I lie in bed alone. ~ Sappho

I simply want to be dead.
Weeping she left me

with many tears and said this:
Oh how badly things have turned out for us.
Sappho, I swear, against my will I leave you.

And I answered her:
Rejoice, go and
remember me. For you know how we cherished you. ~ Sappho

Check it out-this is a copy of a painting of a Greek High Priestess named Calliope. it says she was also the Poet Laureate after Sappho. Doesn't she look exactly like Cher?'
Wow, that's insane. She does look just like young Cher,' Erin said.
Yeah, before she started wearing those white wigs. What the hell's up with that?' Shaunee said.
Damien gave the Twins a look. 'There is nothing wrong with Cher. Absolutely. Nothing.'
Uh-oh,' Shaunee said.
Stepped on a gay nerve,' Erin agreed. ~ P.C. Cast

You write poetry?" Klaus asked.
He had read a lot about poets but had never met one.
"Just a little bit," Isadora said modestly. "I write poems down in this notebook. It's an interest of mine."
"Sappho!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something like, "I'd be very pleased to hear a poem of yours! ~ Lemony Snicket

neither for me honey nor the honey bee ~ Sappho

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

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

yes many and beautiful things
]
]
] ~ Sappho

Girls, be good to these spirits of music and poetry
that breast your threshold with their scented gifts.
Lift the lyre, clear and sweet, they leave with you.
As for me, this body is now so arthritic
I cannot play, hardly even hold the instrument.
Can you believe my white hair was once black?
And oh, the soul grows heavy with the body.
Complaining knee-joints creak at every move.
To think I danced as delicate as a deer!
Some gloomy poems came from these thoughts:
useless: we are all born to lose life,
and what is worse, girls, to lose youth.
The legend of the goddess of the dawn
I'm sure you know: how rosy Eos
madly in love with gorgeous young Tithonus
swept him like booty to her hiding-place
but then forgot he would grow old and grey
while she in despair pursued her immortal way. ~ Sappho

Nature Boy

I was just a boy when I sat down
To watch the news on TV
I saw some ordinary slaughter
I saw some routine atrocity
My father said, don't look away
You got to be strong, you got to be bold, now
He said, that in the end it is beauty
That is going to save the world, now

And she moves among the sparrows
And she floats upon the breeze
She moves among the flowers
She moves something deep inside of me

I was walking around the flower show like a leper
Coming down with some kind of nervous hysteria
When I saw you standing there, green eyes, black hair
Up against the pink and purple wisteria
You said, hey, nature boy, are you looking at me
With some unrighteous intention?
My knees went weak,
I couldn't speak, I was having thoughts
That were not in my best interests to mention

And she moves among the flowers
And she floats upon the smoke
She moves among the shadows
She moves me with just one little look

You took me back to your place
And dressed me up in a deep sea diver's suit
You played the patriot, you raised the flag
And I stood at full salute
Later on we smoked a pipe that struck me dumb
And made it impossible to speak
As you closed in, in slow motion,
Quoting Sappho, in the original Greek

She moves among the shadows
She floats upon the breeze
She moves among ~ Nick Cave

The dice of love are shouting and madness. ~ Sappho

In gold sandals / dawn like a thief / fell upon me. ~ Sappho

I declare
That later on,
Even in an age unlike our own,
Someone will remember who we are. ~ Sappho

Stand and face me, my love,
and scatter the grace in your eyes.
~ Sappho

Whatever one loves most is beautiful. ~ Sappho

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

I have a daughter who reminds me of A marigold in bloom. Kle ~ Sappho

frequently
for those
I treat well are the ones who most of all
harm me ~ Sappho

Nothing is sweeter than love, all other riches
second: even honey I've spat from my mouth. ~ Diane J. Rayor

What creature is it that is
female in nature and hides
in its womb unborn children
who, although they are voiceless,
speak to people far away?
The female creature is a letter.
The unborn children are the letters
(of the alphabet) it carries. And the
letters, although they have no voices,
speak to people far away. ~ Sappho

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,
Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature ... . ~ Sappho

Some call ships, infantry or horsemen
The greatest beauty earth can offer;
I say it is whatever a person
Most lusts after. ~ Sappho

Once again love drives me on, that loosener of limbs, bittersweet creature against which nothing can be done. ~ Sappho

I don't know what to do
two states of mind in me ~ Sappho

I am weary of all your words and soft, strange ways. ~ Sappho

I will let my body flow like water over the gentle cushions. ~ Sappho

Stand to face me beloved
And open out the grace of your eyes ~ Sappho

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

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

And a sweet expression spreads over her fair face. ~ Sappho

I have not had one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song ... ~ Sappho

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

She murmured, "I love the imagery of Sappho, the warm summer air across the velvety darkness, the lover between love's thighs." She stayed quiet a moment. "But it takes a man's kiss to put the fire to the metaphor. ~ Paul A. Myers

I want to be William Shakespeare and Galileo and Robert Frost. I want to be Sappho. I want to be Jane Austen. I want to be Holden Caulfield and Marilyn Monroe and Joan of Arc. I'm sad to think they came before me in history, they made their mark without me.
But they were there.
They happened. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Reminded me of Anaktoria, who is gone. I would rather see her lovely step and the motion of light on her face than chariots of Lydians or ranks of footsoldiers in arms. ~ Sappho

You ask whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not such a fool as that. But if one is only to talk from first-hand experience, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the things they call love, I have what is better - the experience of Sappho, of Euripides, of Catallus, of Shakespeare, of Spenser, of Austen, of Bronte, of anyone else I have read. ~ C.S. Lewis

Someone will remember us
I say
even in another time ~ Sappho

Like a gale smiting an oak
On mountainous terrain,
Eros, with a stroke,
Shattered my brain. ~ Sappho

Experience shows us Wealth unchaperoned by Virtue is never an innocuous neighbor. ~ Sappho

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

When you take advice from a cat, there are always consequences. ~ Elora Bishop

Because I prayed
this word:
I want ~ Sappho

Peer of gods he seemeth to me, the blissful
Man who sits and gazes at thee before him,
Close beside thee sits, and in silence hears thee
Silverly speaking,
Laughing love's low laughter. Oh this, this only
Stirs the troubled heart in my breast to tremble!
For should I but see thee a little moment,
Straight is my voice hushed;
Yea, my tongue is broken, and through and through me
'Neath the flesh impalpable fire runs tingling;
Nothing see mine eyes, and a noise of roaring
Waves in my ears sounds;
Sweat runs down in rivers, a tremor seizes
All my limbs, and paler than grass in autumn,
Caught by pains of menacing death, I falter,
Lost in the love trance. ~ Sappho

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

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

There is a boy, and lust
Has crushed my spirit - just
As gentle Aphrodite planned.
Since I have cast my lot, please, golden-crowned
Aphrodite, let me win this round! ~ Sappho

I want to tell you something but good taste
Restrains me ~ Sappho Van Lesbos

for you beautiful ones my thought
is not changeable ~ Sappho

When anger spreads through the breath, guard thy tongue from barking idly. ~ Sappho

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

Eros harrows my heart: wild gales sweeping desolate mountains, uprooting oaks. ~ Sappho

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

Within the history of lesbianism from the archaic Greek poet Sappho from the Isle of Lesbos, who is the symbol of lust, passion and sensuality between women, to Sister Benedetta Carlini's deeply erotic love affair with another nun, to the 10th century Arab erotic work, Encyclopedia of Pleasure, which gives the account of a love affair between a Christian and an Arab woman, to modern day same-sex marriages and Pride parades, there is certainly place for Anne Bonny and Mary Read. ~ Karl Wiggins

Nocturne

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

Sappho ~ Sherod Santos

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

Yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things
and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say
shame would not hold down your eyes
but rather you would speak about what is just ~ Sappho

At noontime

When the earth is
bright with flaming
heat falling straight down

the cricket sets
up a high-pitched
singing in his wings ~ Sappho

I would not think to touch the sky with two arms ~ Sappho

Sappho isn't really meant to be read. It's meant to be sung and there were dances for the songs, also. Sappho was a performance artist, and now she exists as a textual project. She was saved by her critics, and by people who wrote of her in letters to each other. As the morning sun lathers the pool through the long windows and stripes the opposite walls in gold, I look at the fragment translations. She's paper, too. A paper poet for a paper boy. People claim to be translating her but they don't, really, they use her to write poems from as they fill in the gaps in the fragments. A duet. She may have meant for these to be solos but they're duets now, though the second singer blends in with the first. The first singer in this case is offstage, like in the old days of stars who couldn't sing, a real singer hidden behind a curtain, which is the velvet drape of history. ~ Alexander Chee

Builders, raise the ceiling high, Raise the dome into the sky, Hear the wedding song! For the happy groom is near, Tall as Mars, and statelier, Hear the wedding song! ~ Sappho

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

There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse. ~ Sappho

Some say an army of horsemen,
some of footsoldiers, some of ships,
is the fairest thing on the black earth,
but I say it is what one loves.

It's very easy to make this clear
to everyone, for Helen,
by far surpassing mortals in beauty,
left the best of all husbands

and sailed to Troy,
mindful of neither her child
nor her dear parents, but
with one glimpse she was seduced by

Aphrodite. For easily bent...
and nimbly...[missing text]...
has reminded me now
of Anactoria who is not here;

I would much prefer to see the lovely
way she walks and the radiant glance of her face
than the war-chariots of the Lydians or
their footsoldiers in arms. ~ Sappho

Some men say an army of horse and some men say an arm on foot / and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing / on the black earth. But I say it is / what you love. ~ Sappho

[Didn't Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?]"

Didn't Sappho say her guts clutched up like this?
Before a face suddenly numinous,
her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate
again, milk brought down by a girl's kiss?
It's documented torrents are unloosed
by such events as recently produced
not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us,
one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate.
My eyes and groin are permanently swollen,
I'm alternatingly brilliant and witless
- and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.
Although I'd cream my jeans touching your breast,
sweetheart, it isn't lust; it's all the rest
of what I want with you that scares me shitless. ~ Marilyn Hacker

What cannot be said will be wept. ~ Sappho

In the crooks of your body, I find my religon. ~ Sappho

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

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

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

From all the offspring of the earth and heaven love is the most precious. ~ Sappho

Although only breath, words which I speak are immortal. ~ Sappho

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

Do not talk any more. Do not speak.
Do not break silence until
We are weary of each other.
Let our fingers run like steel
Carving the contours of our bodies' gold.
Do not speak. My face sinks
In the clotted summer of your hair.
The sound of the bees stops.
Stillness falls like a cloud.
Be still. Let your body fall away
Into the awe filled silence
Of the fulfilled summer -
Back, back, infinitely away -
Our lips weak, faint with stillness.

from "When We with Sappho ~ Kenneth Rexroth

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

You are, I think, an evening star,
the fairest of all the stars. ~ Sappho

not one girl I think
who looks on the light of the sun
will ever
have wisdom
like this ~ Sappho

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

LXVII

INDOORS the fire is kindled;
Beechwood is piled on the hearthstone;
Cold are the chattering oak-leaves;
And the ponds frost-bitten.

Softer than rainfall at twilight,
Bringing the fields benediction
And the hills quiet and greyness,
Are my long thoughts of thee.

How should thy friend fear the seasons?
They only perish of winter
Whom Love, audacious and tender,
Never hath visited. ~ Sappho

Mister Cameron - I have read the unexpurgated Ovid, the love poems of Sappho, the Decameron in the original, and a great many texts in Greek and Latin histories that were not though fit for proper gentlemen to read, much less proper ladies. I know in precise detail what Caligula did to, and with, his sisters, and I can quote it to you in Latin or in my own translation if you wish. I am interested in historical truth, and truth in history is often unpleasant and distasteful to those of fine sensibility. I frankly doubt that you will produce anything to shock me. ~ Mercedes Lackey

My heart
flutters in my breast whenever
I quickly glance at you-
I can say nothing,

my tongue is broken. A delicate fire
runs under my skin, my eyes
see nothing, my ears roar,
cold sweat

rushes down me, trembling seizes me,
I am greener than grass.
To myself I seem
needing but little to die ~ Sappho

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

I lay down on one of [the rocks] in the fetal position. When I awoke it was after one a.m. and the tide was rising higher. My body was coated in salt and ocean foam. I felt like I was part of the rock and part of the ocean, and I wondered if this was how Sappho felt, even in her deepest desperation, part of the earth, like that desperation and longing or eternal cosmic want was something to be celebrated–something natural–holy even, or at least, not just something to be endured. ~ Melissa Broder (author)

The greatest feminists have also been the greatest lovers. I'm thinking not only of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, but of Anais Nin, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and of course Sappho. You cannot divide creative juices from human juices. And as long as juicy women are equated with bad women, we will err on the side of being bad. ~ Erica Jong

Come to me once more, and abate my torment;
Take the bitter care from my mind, and give me
All I long for; Lady, in all my battles
Fight as my comrade. ~ Sappho

May you sleep on the breast of your delicate friend ~ Sappho

What did we talk about?

I don't remember. We talked so hard and sat so still that I got cramps in my knee. We had too many cups of tea and then didn't want to leave the table to go to the bathroom because we didn't want to stop talking. You will think we talked of revolution but we didn't. Nor did we talk of our own souls. Nor of sewing. Nor of babies. Nor of departmental intrigue. It was political if by politics you mean the laboratory talk that characters in bad movies are perpetually trying to convey (unsuccessfully) when they Wrinkle Their Wee Brows and say (valiantly--dutifully--after all, they didn't write it) "But, Doctor, doesn't that violate Finagle's Constant?" I staggered to the bathroom, released floods of tea, and returned to the kitchen to talk. It was professional talk. It left my grey-faced and with such concentration that I began to develop a headache. We talked about Mary Ann Evans' loss of faith, about Emily Brontë's isolation, about Charlotte Brontë's blinding cloud, about the split in Virginia Woolf's head and the split in her economic condition. We talked about Lady Murasaki, who wrote in a form that no respectable man would touch, Hroswit, a little name whose plays "may perhaps amuse myself," Miss Austen, who had no more expression in society than a firescreen or a poker. They did not all write letters, write memoirs, or go on the stage. Sappho--only an ambiguous, somewhat disagreeable name. Corinna? The teacher of Pindar. Olive Schriener, gr ~ Joanna Russ

The gorgeous man presents a gorgeous view;
The good man will in time be gorgeous, too. ~ Sappho