Refrain In Poetry Quotes & Sayings

Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain
Concludes thy musings once again? — Emily Bronte

Repetition sometimes works in poetry, but rarely in prose. The musical provocateur John Cage once wrote a lecture in which a single page was repeated fourteen times, with the refrain "If anybody is sleep let him go to sleep" (Cage, 1961). Midway through, the artist Jean Reynal stood up and screamed, "John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute. — Gary F. Marcus

True and false fears let us refrain,
Let us love nobly, and live, and add again
Years and years unto years, till we attain
To write threescore: this is the second of our reign. — John Donne

Risk and failure is a part of our equation, and if you are seeing too little failure, you are actually probably not taking enough risks. — Peter Barris

I did not foresee my words becoming such a reverie of mimic and refrain. — Joshua Kryah

No matter how badly you push it away and ignore it, the pain of loss never really goes away. — Karina Halle

When I no longer have your heart
I will not request your body
your presence
or even your polite conversation.
I will go away to a far country
separated from you by the sea
- on which I cannot walk -
and refrain even from sending
letters
describing my pain. — Alice Walker

It is not certain whether the effects of totalitarianism upon verse need be so deadly as its effects on prose. There is a whole series of converging reasons why it is somewhat easier for a poet than a prose writer to feel at home in an authoritarian society.[ ... ]what the poet is saying- that is, what his poem "means" if translated into prose- is relatively unimportant, even to himself. The thought contained in a poem is always simple, and is no more the primary purpose of the poem than the anecdote is the primary purpose of the picture. A poem is an arrangement of sounds and associations, as a painting is an arrangement of brushmarks. For short snatches, indeed, as in the refrain of a song, poetry can even dispense with meaning altogether. — George Orwell

I feel what they feel: man-hating, that volatile admixture of pity, contempt, disgust, envy, alienation, fear, and rage at men. It is hatred not only for the anonymous man who makes sucking noises on the street, not only for the rapist or the judge who acquits him, but for what the Greeks called philo-aphilos, 'hate in love,' for the men women share their lives with-husbands, lovers, friends, fathers, brothers, sons, coworkers. — Judith Levine

Sometimes when I'm on the phone, someone will say, 'Yes, Mr. Yeoh.' And I'm thinking, 'I'm not Mr. Yeoh, man.' — Michelle Yeoh

I am very proud of the fact that many workers in my Gau, numerous former Communists and Social Democrats were won over by us and became local group leaders and Party functionaries. — Fritz Sauckel

In Bonn, where I studied for a year, I changed from classical to Romance philology, taught there by its great founder, F. Diez, and at the beginning of 1852, I received the doctorate for a dissertation on the refrain in Provencal poetry. — Paul Heyse