Sonnet Quotes

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. (Robert A. Heinlein)
I have three phobias which, could I mute them, would make my life as slick as a sonnet, but as dull as ditch water: I hate to go to bed, I hate to get up, and I hate to be alone. View quote
Tallulah Bankhead
Scorn not the sonnet. Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours with this key Shakespeare unlocked his heart. View quote
William Wordsworth
Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the forms ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it. View quote
Rollo May
Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, ' If science can't do something, therefore religion can. View quote
Richard Dawkins
An intellectuals weapon is writing, but sometimes people react as if it were a firearm. A writer can do a lot to change the situation, but as far as I know, no dictatorship has fallen because of a sonnet. View quote
Mario Benedetti
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit. View quote
Madeleine L'Engle
You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it? Yes. Mrs. Whatsit said. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you. View quote
Madeleine L'Engle
If I wrote in a sonnet form, I would be distorting. Or if I had some great new idea for line breaks and I used it in a poem, but it's really not right for that poem, but I wanted it, that would be distorting. View quote
Sharon Olds
Even if you walk exactly the same route each time - as with a sonnet - the events along the route cannot be imagined to be the same from day to day, as the poet's health, sight, his anticipations, moods, fears, thoughts cannot be the same. View quote
A. R. Ammons
The most important thing about me is that I am a Catholic. It's a superstructure within which you can work, like a sonnet. (Jean Kerr)
A Sonnet is a moment's monument,- Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour. View quote
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Our host received a piece of paper from my familiar spirit. I asked if he were giving him a check or note to pay the bill. He answered no, that he had settled the account with a poem. "What? A poem?" I asked. "Are innkeepers curious about rhymes?" "It's the local currency," he answered. "The sextain I've just given him will cover our expenses. I wasn't afraid of coming up short. Even if we'd spent a week in luxury, it wouldn't have cost a sonnet, and I have four on me. Along with two epigrams, two odes and an eclogue." View quote
Cyrano de Bergerac
Natural law is not applicable to the unseen world behind the symbols, because it is unadapted to anything except symbols, and its perfection is a perfection of symbolic linkage. You cannot apply such a scheme to the parts of our personality which are not measurable by symbols any more than you can extract the square root of a sonnet. View quote
Arthur Eddington
All at once I loathed her, because she had hurt me. This girl! She had torn up my sonnet by Dowson, she had shown my telegram to everybody in the Columbia Buffet. She had made a fool of me at the beach. She suspected my virility, and her suspicion was the same as the scorn in her eyes. I watched her face and lips and thought how it would be a pleasure to strike her, send my fist with all force against her nose and lips. View quote
John Fante
Yes, there's love if you want it. Don't sound like no sonnet, my lord. View quote
Richard Ashcroft
When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, 'Damn the age; I will write for Antiquity! View quote
Charles Lamb
At the following morning, when the first citizens started walking around, he was found dead. So died the poor and brave Antônio da Silva Marramaque who, at the age of 18, dreamed with the glories of poetry and was now murdered due his great soul and brave moral! He didn't compose any sonnet and, if he did, he composed bad ones. But, by his way, he was a hero and a poet... that God bless him! View quote
Lima Barreto
My sonnet asserts that the sonnet still lives. My epic, should such fortune befall me, asserts that the heroic narrative is not lost - that it is born again. View quote
James Fenton
To me there's no creativity without boundaries. If you're gonna write a sonnet, it's 14 lines, so it's solving the problem within the container. View quote
Lorne Michaels
When a sonnet is mediocre it is bad, for it should be sublime. (Giacomo Casanova)
There is no species of poetry which is better adapted to the taste of a melancholy man than a sonnet. Its brevity precludes the possibility of it becoming tiresome. View quote
Henry Kirke White
You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you. View quote
Madeleine L'Engle
A story is a story is a story. The only difference is in the techniques you bring to bear. There are always limitations on what you can and can't do. But I enjoy that. Just like when you write a sonnet or haiku, there are rules you have to abide by. And to me, playing within the rules is the fun part. It keeps the brain fresh. View quote
J. Michael Straczynski
Leon Theremin's original designs are elegant, ingenious and effective. As electronics goes, the theremin is very simple. But there are so many subtleties hidden in the details of the design. It's like a great sonnet, or a painting, or a speech, that is perfectly done on more than one level. View quote
Robert Moog