Top 60 Amy Lowell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Everything mortal has moments immortal.”

— Amy Lowell

2. “My words are little jars For you to take and put upon a shelf. Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, And they have many pleasant colours and lustres To recommend them. Also the scent from them fills the room With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.”

— Amy Lowell

3. “All books are either dreams or swords, you can cut, or you can drug, with words.”

— Amy Lowell

4. “Poetry, far more than fiction, reveals the soul of humanity.”

— Amy Lowell

5. “My heart is tuned to sorrow, and the strings Vibrate most readily to minor chords, Searching and sad; my mind is stuffed with words Which voice the passion and the ache of things: Illusions beating with their baffled wings Against the walls of circumstance.”

— Amy Lowell

6. “For books are more than books, they are the life The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived and worked and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives.”

— Amy Lowell

7. “Without poetry the soul and heart of man starves and dies.”

— Amy Lowell

8. “Don’t ask a writer what he’s working on. It’s like asking someone with cancer on the progress of his disease.”

— Amy Lowell

9. “I know that a creed is the shell of a lie.”

— Amy Lowell

10. “Christ! What are patterns for?”

— Amy Lowell

11. “Oh! To be a butterfly Still, upon a flower, Winking with its painted wings, Happy in the hour.”

— Amy Lowell

12. “Happiness: We rarely feel it. I would buy it, beg it, steal it, Pay in coins of dripping blood For this one transcendent good.”

— Amy Lowell

13. “This is America, This vast, confused beauty, This staring, restless speed of loveliness, Mighty, overwhelming, crude, of all forms, Making grandeur out of profusion, Afraid of no incongruities, Sublime in its audacity, Bizarre breaker of moulds.”

— Amy Lowell

14. “Youth condemns; maturity condones.”

— Amy Lowell

15. “I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against the want of you; of squeezing it into little inkdrops, And posting it.”

— Amy Lowell

16. “This is war: Boys flung into a breach Like shoveled earth; And old men, Broken, Driving rapidly before crowds of people In a glitter of silly decorations. Behind the boys And the old men, Life weeps, And shreds her garments To the blowing winds.”

— Amy Lowell

17. “May is much sunshine through small leaves.”

— Amy Lowell

18. “To understand Vers libre, one must abandon all desire to find in it the even rhythm of metrical feet. One must allow the lines to flow as they will when read aloud by an intelligent reader.”

— Amy Lowell

19. “All recurring joy is pain refined.”

— Amy Lowell

20. “Art is like politics. Any theory carried too far ends in sterility, and freshness is only gained by following some other line.”

— Amy Lowell

21. “Oh! To be a flower Nodding in the sun, Bending, then upspringing As the breezes run.”

— Amy Lowell

22. “Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in.”

— Amy Lowell

23. “Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart.”

— Amy Lowell

24. “When you came, you were like red wine and honey, and the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness.”

— Amy Lowell

25. “You are ice and fire the touch of you burns my hands like snow.”

— Amy Lowell

26. “Brighter than fireflies upon the Uji River are your words in the dark, Beloved.”

— Amy Lowell

27. “A black cat among roses, phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon, the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still. It is dazed with moonlight, contented with perfume...”

— Amy Lowell

28. “Poetry is the most concentrated form of literature; it is the most emotionalized and powerful way in which thought can be presented...”

— Amy Lowell

29. “Happiness, to some, elation; Is, to others, mere stagnation.”

— Amy Lowell

30. “How much more beautiful is the moon, Slanting down the gauffered branches of a plum-tree; The moon Wavering across a bed of tulips; The moon, Still, Upon your face. You shine, Beloved, You and the moon. But which is the reflection?”

— Amy Lowell

31. “Underneath my stiffened gown Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin, A basin in the midst of hedges grown So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding, But she guesses he is near, And the sliding of the water Seems the stroking of a dear Hand upon her.”

— Amy Lowell

32. “Sexual love is the most stupendous fact of the universe, and the most magical mystery our poor blind senses know.”

— Amy Lowell

33. “Polyphonic prose is a kind of free verse, except that it is still freer. Polyphonic makes full use of cadence, rime, alliteration, assonance.”

— Amy Lowell

34. “A man must be sacrificed now and again to provide for the next generation of men.”

— Amy Lowell

35. “The stigma of oddness is the price a myopic world always exacts of genius.”

— Amy Lowell

36. “Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose.”

— Amy Lowell

37. “Guarded within the old red wall’s embrace, Marshalled like soldiers in gay company, The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry Wheels out into the sunlight.”

— Amy Lowell

38. “How loud clocks can tick when a room is empty, and one is alone!”

— Amy Lowell

39. “Rapture’s self is three parts sorrow.”

— Amy Lowell

40. “Hate is ravening vulture beaks descending on a place of skulls.”

— Amy Lowell

41. “If what we worship fail us, still the fire burns on, and it is much to have believed.”

— Amy Lowell

42. “Time! Joyless emblem of the greed of millions, robber of the best which earth can give.”

— Amy Lowell

43. “On the neck of the young man sparkles no gem so gracious as enterprise. Youth condemns; maturity condones.”

— Amy Lowell

44. “To-night when the full-bellied moon swallows the stars. Grant that I know.”

— Amy Lowell

45. “Can you see through the night, woman, that you stare so upon it? Man, what sparks do your eyes follow in the smouldering darkness?”

— Amy Lowell

46. “Now you are come! You tremble like a star Poised where, behind earth’s rim, the sun has set. Your voice has sung across my heart, but numb And mute, I have no tones to answer.”

— Amy Lowell

47. “Witch-heart, are you gold or black?”

— Amy Lowell

48. “My eyes ache with the weight of unshed tears. You are my home, do you not understand?”

— Amy Lowell

49. “Even pain pricks to livelier living.”

— Amy Lowell

50. “I should like to bring a case to trial: Prosperity versus Beauty, Cash registers teetering in a balance against the comfort of the soul.”

— Amy Lowell