Edgar Lee Masters Quotes
Edgar Lee Masters offers poetic, sly musings on chaos, revolution, and society that linger like a wandering lantern.
-
In my Spanish cloak, And old slouch hat, And overshoes of felt, And Tyke, my faithful dog, And my knotted hickory cane, I slipped about with a bull's-eye lantern From door to door on the square
-
Blind as I was, I tried to get out As the carriage fell in the ditch, And was caught in the wheels and killed.
-
Go by reverently, and read with sober care How a great people, riding with defiant shouts The centaur of Revolution, Spurred and whipped to frenzy, Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea Over the precipice they were nearing, And fell from his back in precipitate awe To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.
-
And when you are poor and have to carry The Christian creed and wife and children All on your back, it is too much! That's why I made the Elixir of Youth, Which landed me in the jail at Peoria Branded a swindler and a crook By the upright Federal Judge!
-
You may think, passer-by, that Fate Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, Around which you may walk by the use of foresight And wisdom.
-
The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, why fiddle you must, for all your life.
-
O maternal earth which rocks the fallen leaf to sleep!
-
And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle— And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, And not a single regret.
-
Did I follow Truth wherever she led, And stand against the whole world for a cause, And uphold the weak against the strong? If I did I would be remembered among men.
-
The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.
-
There is the silence of age, too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it in words intelligible to those who have not lived the great range of life.
-
Work for your own soul's sake.
-
The Typical American? He is sent to school Little or much, where he imbibes the rule Of safety first and comfort; in his youth He joins the church and ends the quest of truth.
-
Many books have been written to show that Christianity has emasculated the world, that it shoved aside the enlightenment and wisdom of Hellas for a doctrine of superstition and ignorance.
-
The dust's for crawling, heaven's for flying, Wherefore, O Soul, whose wings are grown, Soar upward to the sun!
-
To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
-
To love is to find your own soul Through the soul of the beloved one.