Ode Quotes & Sayings

No poet is required to write in stanzas, or indeed in regular forms at all. Coleridge's 'Dejection: An Ode' has a rhyme scheme and sequence of long and short lines that goes without regular pattern, following the mood and whim of the poet. Such a form is known as an irregular ode. — James Fenton

Primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. The ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity tohistory, the drama depicts life. The characteristic of the first poetry is ingeniousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth. — Victor Hugo

I don't know how to cure the source-itis except to tell you that I can discover a good many possible sources myself for Wise Blood but I am often embarrassed to find that I read the sources after I had written the book. I have been exposed to Wordsworth's "Intimation" ode but that is all I can say about it. I have one of those food-chopper brains that nothing comes out of the way it went in. The Oedipus business comes nearer home. Of course Haze Motes is not an Oedipus figure but there are the obvious resemblances. At the time I was writing the last of the book, I was living in Connecticut with the Robert Fitzgeralds. Robert Fitzgerald translated the Theban cycle with Dudley Fitts, and their translation of the Oedipus Rex had just come out and I was much taken with it. Do you know that translation? I am not an authority on such things but I think it must be the best, and it is certainly very beautiful. Anyway, all I can say is, I did a lot of thinking about Oedipus. — Flannery O'Connor

The new stuff's brilliant," I volunteer somewhat hesitantly because I really, really don't want him thinking that I'm trying to kiss his arse, but to my amazement he wrinkles his nose and seesaws his hand. "You don't like it?"
He shifts slightly. "No, it's fine. It's just sometimes it gets a bit uncomfortable singing lyrics that seem to be an ode to my sister in law's vagina! — Lily Morton

We are born to believe
We can't change a thing
We can't, and we never could.
But before you believe
The things you believe
You must understand
To be understood. — John C. O'Callaghan

This poem will never reach its destination. On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity — Voltaire

But I watched Millie. I watched Millie because she fascinated me. She was a brand new species, an intoxicating mix of girl and enigma, familiar yet completely foreign. I'd never met anyone like her, yet I felt like I'd known her forever. And since the moment I'd looked down into her face and felt that jolt of ode-to-joy-and-holy-shit, I'd been falling, falling, falling, unable to stop myself, unable to look away, helpless to do the smart thing. And the smart thing, the kind thing would be to stay away. But no one had ever accused me of being particularly smart. — Amy Harmon

ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC'D And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry? No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thickened, 'Twas not from sickness' shots. No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots. Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots. O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly By falling down a well. They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great. If — Mark Twain

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness, - -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. — John Keats

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead!-
Invoke then, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.
-Ode to Youth and Memory — George Meredith

My obsession with accumulation, which at times has taken on the whisper of a psychic illness - as anyone who has experienced the ode to the Collyer brothers that is my 'Vogue' office will concur - began in infancy. — Hamish Bowles

Seeking survival, hostile, hidden from sight,
Deliciously flavoured - juicy, sweet bite,
Exploding senses preparing to ignite,
Inspiring to escape from the suffocating night. — Claudia Bakker

Fine, but you should at least have to write an epic poem in my honor. Here, I'll help you. "Ode to Keefe Sencen, that brave lovable nut. He may not have teal eyes, but he has a really cute,"
"KEEFE"! — Shannon Messenger

I shall write an ode!" threatened Philip direfully.
"Ah no, that is too much!" cried De Vangrisse with feeling. — Georgette Heyer

Those who draw their sustenance from science are blessed. It is for me to only derive an occasional pleasure. This is nothing worthy of conceit, but I am indeed touched by the joys. This book is an ode to such joys, a digest of my collections from various sources. — Rabindranath Tagore

Creativity is an ode to life. It is not a form of entertainment. It is a form of joy. — Wynn Bullock

Vogon poetry is of course, the third worst in the universe.
The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal haemorrhaging and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos was reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his 12-book epic entitled "My Favourite Bathtime Gurgles" when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save humanity, leapt straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.
The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, in the destruction of the planet Earth. Vogon poetry is mild by comparison. — Douglas Adams

The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver ... Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother. — Louise Bourgeois

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real. — Victor Hugo

Her religious poetry was surprisingly slender, and as I was eager to know more about her religion, I asked her about this aspect of her poetry. She replied with these lines from Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'
that is all Ye know on eath, and all ye need to know'. Do not ask me to immortalise the great Mystery of Life. I am just a humble worker. For beauty, look to the Pslams, to Isaiah, to St. John of the Cross. How could my poor pen scan such verse? For truth, look to the Gospels
four short accounts of God made Man. There is nothing more to say. — Jennifer Worth

She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir. — Charles Dickens

O moon! I may not be able to reach you or touch you with my hands, but I will never forget to kiss your silvery twinkling lips with my lovely eyes. — Debasish Mridha

The white in her hair verged on silver-plate. The style was some cosmetologist's ode to meringue. — Jonathan Kellerman

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, We will remember them. "Ode of Remembrance" Lawrence Binyon — John Ringo

I am moved by the multitudes of your intelligence and sometimes, returning, I become the sea - in love with your speed, your heaviness and breath. — Frank O'Hara

I didn't want to be in love with you. I didn't want to believe in love at all. It's never happened to me before. And to be perfectly frank, I'm still not entirely happy about the whole thing. I think - it's going to be exhausting. You're domineering and devious and I've noticed that whenever we're not kissing, I wish we were." Her voice had grown nearly plaintive; she stopped and cleared her throat. "It's a damnable situation. I don't know what to do about it."
He eyed her from the chair. "I'm pigheaded, too. Pray don't forget that."
"Certainly not. It was the next thing I was going to mention."
"My sweet, your notion of love is unique, to say the least. I wonder that you haven't written me sonnets already. Something like 'Ode to the Blackguard. — Shana Abe

Our word Tragedy comes from the greek, tragos-ode: "The song of the goat." Anybody who has ever heard a goat attempt to sing will know why. — Neil Gaiman

Wheresoe'er I turn my view,
All is strange, yet nothing new:
Endless labor all along,
Endless labor to be wrong:
Phrase that Time has flung away;
Uncouth words in disarray,
Trick'd in antique ruff and bonnet,
Ode, and elegy, and sonnet. — Samuel Johnson

The Colonel looked at this strange fashion and asked in broken Urdu, 'Well? You Muslim?' 'Half,' said Ghalib. 'What does that mean?' asked the Colonel. 'I drink wine,' said Ghalib, 'but I don't eat pork.' The Colonel laughed, and Ghalib then showed him the letter which he had received from the Minister for India [sic] in acknowledgement of the ode to Her Majesty the Queen which Ghalib has sent. The Colonel said, 'After the victory of government forces why did you not present yourself at the Ridge?' Ghalib replied, 'My rank required that I should have four palanquin bearers, but all four of them ran away and left me, so I could not come. — William Dalrymple

Ode to Spring"

I can only find words for.
And sometimes I can't.
Here are these flowers that stand for.
I stand here on the sidewalk.

I can't stand it, but yes of course I understand it.
Everything has to have meaning.
Things have to stand for something.
I can't take the time. Even skin-deep is too deep.

I say to the flower stand man:
Beautiful flowers at your flower stand, man.
I'll take a dozen of the lilies.
I'm standing as it were on my knees

Before a little man up on a raised
Runway altar where his flowers are arrayed
Along the outside of the shop.
I take my flames and pay inside.

I go off and have sexual intercourse.
The woman is the woman I love.
The room displays thirteen lilies.
I stand on the surface. — Frederick Seidel

What a scream of agony by torture lengthened out that lute sent forth! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

i am
a lioness
who is no longer
afraid to let the world
hear her
roar

-an ode to me — Amanda Lovelace

Unnur Birna is a Reykjavik-based violinist and singer. She has performed as a session musician with countless Icelandic and international artists while recording and appearing as a solo artist as well. Unnur has joined me as an unpaid guest on a few Icelandic shows in recent years, so it is a great pleasure to return the favour and appear on one of her songs at last. This new track, Sunshine, came about in Italy, written as an ode to sunlight and happiness after fleeing the dark winter in Iceland — Ian Anderson

You might want to ease up on the perfume." "I'm not wearing perfume." "Sure you are. I think it's called 'Ode To Get The Fuck Away From Me'." I looked at her face quickly enough to see her have to force her lips to stay in a straight line. "Apparently I need to go put on some more," she said, — Jessica Gadziala

An aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks sentences of wisdom, Burgundy sings the inspired Ode. — Ambrose Bierce

He's been a bit grumpy since Potato Day.'
She heard Gethin choke back a laugh.
'He set up an all-day workshop on all things potato after reading up about successful winter events at other nurseries,' she went on, unable to hide her own amusement. 'It was a terrible failure. Hardly anyone turned up apart from our poet, Wilfie, who wrote a Potat-Ode to celebrate the occasion. — Christine Stovell

Celebrate my heart, at ease or on fire, in my usual featherbrained way.

Horace, Roman Poet
Ode I-6, 23 BCE — Vivian Swift

Ode to Algebra
Thrust into this dingy classroom
we die like lampless moths
locked into the desolation of
fluorescent lights and metal desks.
Ten minutes until the bell rings.
What use is the quadratic formula
in our daily lives?
Can we use it to unlock the secrets
in the hearts of those we love?
Five minutes until the bell rings.
Cruel Algebra teacher,
won't you let us go? — Meg Cabot

Horace's best ode would not please a young woman as much as the mediocre verses of the young man she is in love with. — Michael Moore

Ode to the Chamber
... linger here amidst the chamber
in which we embrace our love
talk to me of sonnets
and call me turtledove ... — Muse

O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Ode to Love
Lin Huiyin

I think you are the April of this world,
Sure, you are the April of this world.
Your laughter has lit up all the wind,
So gently mingling with the spring.

You are the clouds in early spring,
The dusk wind blows up and down.
And the stars blink now and then,
Fine rain drops down amid the flowers.

So gentle and graceful,
You are crowned with garlands.
So sublime and innocent,
You are a full moon over each evening.

The snow melts, with that light yellow,
You look like the first budding green.
You are the soft joy of white lotus
Rising up in your fancy dreamland.

You're the blooming flowers over the trees,
You're a swallow twittering between the beams;
Full of love, full of warm hope,
You are the spring of this world! — Lin Huiyin

You have already achieved the English-Language poet's most important goal: you can read, Write and speak English well enough to understand this sentence. — Stephen Fry

I like my coffee black, my beer from Germany, wine from Burgundy, the darker, the better. I like my heroes complicated and brooding, James Dean in oiled leather, leaning on a motorcycle. You know the color. ("Ode to Chocolate") — Barbara Crooker

The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Everything goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, security, happiness, all, to get the book written. If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies. — William Faulkner

Accepting a religion may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. It might be a matter of immersion in a set of practices. Perhaps the practices have only an emotional point, or a social point. Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends. The rituals of birth, coming of age, or funerals do this. It is silly to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false. People do not go to a funeral service to hear something true, but to mourn, or to begin to stop mourning, or to meditate on departed life. It can be as inappropriate to ask whether what is said is true as to ask whether Keats's ode to a Grecian urn is true. The poem is successful or not in quite a different dimension, and so is Chartres cathedral, or a statue of the Buddha. They may be magnificent, and moving, and awe-inspiring, but not because they make statements that are true or false. — Simon Blackburn

You wouldn't think the touch of someone's hand could blow your mind. It's nothing, right? People don't right songs and poems about holding hands - they write them about kisses and sex and eternal love. I mean, when you're a little kid you hold hands with your parents to cross the street. Who's going to write an ode to that?
We were alone in the dark, even though the enormous theater was filled with probably a thousand people. We were a tiny island in a sea of other people who didn't matter, who had no meaning, who were so stupid, so oblivious, so stuck in their own boring lives that they didn't even notice the huge, momentous, life-shattering event that was taking place right there in row L, between seats 102 and 104.
Derek Edwards was holding my hand. — Claire LaZebnik

Ode to Douglas Adams

In the solar system we inhabit, we live on a small planet we all call Earth. Okay, when I say small, I mean it's small compared to say, oh, Jupiter. Earth is something like a dime compared to Jupiter's beach ball. On this Earth is a fairly large country we all call The United States of America. Of course, when I say fairly large, it's like the U.S. is a piece of broccoli next to China's really large cauliflower. Now that I think of it, that may not be a good comparison as it depends on the restaurant you go to. At the place I was at last night it would be a good comparison as the cauliflower was larger than the broccoli. Not that I'd touch either. I had a hamburger with fries and somebody at the next table had those ghastly vegetables.

From the Preface to "Sex and the American Male." I was saddened by the passing of Douglas Adams and wrote the preface to sound a little like his "Hitchhiker's..." books and to honor him. I hope he's smiling. — Jay Williams

I intended an Ode, And it turned to a Sonnet. — Henry Austin Dobson

During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. — Douglas Adams

Tobacco Shop') and compares his thinking to 'an overturned bucket' (in a poem dated 16 August 1934). If Soares thinks that 'Nothing is more oppressive than the affection of others' (Text 348), a Ricardo Reis ode (dated 1 November 1930) maintains that 'The same love by which we're loved/Oppresses us with its wanting. — Fernando Pessoa

Love is a fiction, a fable, an ode spun by poets and drunks, a fantastical tale told across one thousand and one nights, it is the genie in the bottle, it is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it's the lie designed to seduce you. — Lauren Blakely

I believe that poetry is a primal impulse within us all. — Stephen Fry

No, I chose the name Jane Seymour because I was doing my first film, 'Ode to Lovely War,' and one of the top agents in England spotted me dancing in the chorus. I was a singer and dancer in that movie with Maggie Smith, um, and he told me he couldn't sell me as Joyce Penelope Willomena Frankenburger. — Jane Seymour

One day I will write an ode about kissing. I will call it "Ode to a Kiss".

It will be epic. — Nicola Yoon

When I hate I rob myself of something; but when I love I become richer by the object I love. — Friedrich Schiller

Does the king know you're back?"
"Nope! I'm trying to think of a properly dramatic way to inform him. Perhaps a hundred chasmfiends marching in unison, singing an ode to my magnificence."
"That sounds ... hard."
"Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation."
"I have no idea what you just said."
"Yeah, the storming things have real trouble tuning their tonic chords and maintaining just intonation. — Brandon Sanderson

I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. — Henry David Thoreau

[On writing her first poem at age eight:] An ode to my dead mother and father, who were both alive and pretty pissed off. — Judith Viorst

Tinted Distances is a tender meditation that reveals a careful eye and steady devotion to elegy and ode. — Dorianne Laux

The pleasures of love proceed successively from a distich to a quatrain, from a quatrain to a sonnet, from a sonnet to a ballad, from a ballad to an ode, from an ode to a cantata, and from a cantata to a dithyramb. A husband who begins with the dithyramb is a fool. — Honore De Balzac

Oh, gods - bacon! I promised myself that once I achieved immortality again, I would assemble the Nine Muses and together we would create an ode, a hymnal to the power of bacon, which would move the heavens to tears and cause rapture across the universe.
Bacon is good.
Yes - that may be the title of the song: Bacon Is Good. — Rick Riordan

One word of praise from a woman is dearer to me than a whole ode from a man . — Maxim Gorky

I sleep on a tar roof
scream my songs
into lazy floods of stars ...
a white powder paddles through blood and heart
and the returns
pure and easy ...
This city is on my side. — Jim Carroll

I take the dust from the lotus feet of the guru to cleanse the mirror of my mind." So begins a sacred ode to Hanuman. — Ram Dass

Like God
Gumbo is hard
to get right
& I don't bother
asking for it outside
my mother's house.
Like life, there's no one
way to do it,
& a hundred ways,
from here to Sunday,
to get it dead wrong. — Kevin Young

1 No way is hard where there is a simple heart. 2 Nor is there any wound where the thoughts are upright: 3 Nor is there any storm in the depth of the illuminated thought: 4 Where one is surrounded on every side by beauty, there is nothing that is divided. 5 The likeness of what is below is that which is above; for everything is above: what is below is nothing but the imagination of those that are without knowledge. Solomon's 34th Ode — Anonymous

This Marriage - Ode 2667

May these vows and this marriage be blessed.
May it be sweet milk,
this marriage, like wine and halvah.
May this marriage offer fruit and shade
like the date palm.
May this marriage be full of laughter,
our every day a day in paradise.
May this marriage be a sign of compassion,
a seal of happiness here and hereafter.
May this marriage have a fair face and a good name,
an omen as welcome
as the moon in a clear blue sky.
I am out of words to describe
how spirit mingles in this marriage — Kabir Helminski

Hazard of the job. That's Ode de Anal Gland you smell. — Kelly Moran

She wakes in a puddle of sunlight.
Her hands asleep beside her.
Her hair draped on the lawn
like a mantle of cloth. — Roman Payne

Elegantly accomplished," said Nehemiah Trot. "I shall compose an Ode. Would you like to stay and listen? — Neil Gaiman

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both. — Victor Hugo