Edwin Arlington Robinson Quotes

Edwin Arlington Robinson offers deep, solemn reflections on youth, justice and friendship that feel like quiet, thoughtful musings.

24 quotes

1. Your Dollar is your only Word, The wrath of it your only fear. You build it altars tall enough To make you see, but your are blind; You cannot leave it long enough To look before you or behind.

2. A thousand golden sheaves were lying there, Shining and still, but not for long to stay- As if a thousand girls with golden hair Might rise from where they slept and go away.

3. Are we no greater than the noise we make Along one blind atomic pilgrimage Whereon by crass chance billeted we go Because our brains and bones and cartilage Will have it so?

4. Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich-yes, richer than a king- And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head.

5. He was himself and he had lost the speed He started with, and he was left behind.

6. You have made The cement of your churches out of tears And ashes, and the fabric will not stand.

7. The gods are growing old; The stars are singing Golden hair to gray Green leaf to yellow leaf,-or chlorophyl To xanthophyl, to be more scientific.

8. We are young And we are friends of time.

9. I am living on hope and faith ... a pretty good diet when the mind will receive them.

10. Life is the game that must be played.

11. Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong! Tell me, O Lord--tell me, O Lord, how long Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross!

12. The world is not a prison house but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.

13. Were it not for love, Poor life would be a ship not worth launching.

14. The typical entrepreneur is no longer the bold and tireless man of Marshall, or the sly and rapacious Moneybags of Marx, but a mass of inert shareholders, indistinguishable from rentiers, who employ salaried managers to run their concerns.

15. It is impossible to understand the economic system in which we are living if we try to interpret it as a rational scheme.It has to be understood as an awkward phase in a continuing process of historical development.

16. Where's the need of singing now?

17. For through it all--above, beyond it all-- I know the far-sent message of the years, I feel the coming glory of the Light.

18. And thus we all are nighing The truth we fear to know: Death will end our crying For friends that come and go.

19. Youth sees too far to see how near it is To seeing farther.

20. For when a woman is left too much alone, sooner or later she begins to think; and no man knows what then she may discover.

21. And we who delve in beauty's lore Know all that we have known before Of what inexorable cause Makes Time so vicious in his reaping.

22. To some will come a time when change itself is beauty, if not heaven.

23. I mean you last as long as lies.

24. Love must have wings to fly away from love, And to fly back again.