Robinson Jeffers Quotes

Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve … As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.

Seagulls . . . slim yachts of the element.

The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.

That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you.

The heads of strong old age are beautiful beyond all grace of youth.

Know that however ugly the parts appear the whole remains beautiful.

He is strong and pain is worse to the strong, incapacity is worse.

Long live freedom and damn the ideologies.

Does it matter whether you hate yourself? At least love your eyes that can see, your mind that can hear the music, the thunder of the wings.

O that our souls could scale a height like this, A mighty mountain swept o’er by the bleak Keen winds of heaven; and, standing on that peak Above the blinding clouds of prejudice, Would we could see all truly as it is; The calm eternal truth would keep us meek.

The world’s in a bad way, my man, And bound to be worse before it mends; Better lie up in the mountain here Four or five centuries, While the stars go over the lonely ocean.

Oh heavy change. The world deteriorates like a rotting apple, worms and a skin.

Know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful…
… the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.

The love of freedom has been the quality of Western man.

The tides are in our veins.

A little too abstract, a little too wise, It is time for us to kiss the earth again, It is time to let the leaves rain from the skies, Let the rich life run to the roots again.

Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.

Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts.

Cruelty is a part of nature, at least of human nature, but it is the one thing that seems unnatural to us.

It is only a little planet, but how beautiful it is.

…Science and mathematics Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it, They never touch it: consider what an explosion Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world If any mind for a moment touch truth.

Still the mind smiles at its own rebellions.