Edgar Lee Masters Quotes on Life (38 Quotes)

But in taking life for myself,
In seizing and crushing their souls,
As a child crushes grapes and drinks
From its palms the purple juice,
I came to this wingless void,
Where neither red, nor gold, nor wine,
Nor the rhythm of life are known.

And they cried to me for life, life, life.

After wandering afar, over the world,
Life in cities, marriages, motehrhood--
(They all married, and I am homeless, alone.

In the morning of life I knew aspiration and saw glory.

And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must and for all your life.

How shall the soul of a man be larger than the life he has lived?

But not a cell in all the tree
Knew aught save that it thrilled with life,
Nor cared because the hammock fell
In the dust with Milton's poems.

For the cloth of life is woven, you know,
To a pattern hidden under the loom --
A pattern you never see!

In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.

To put meaning in one's life may end in madness, But life without meaning is the torture Of restlessness and vague desire-It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.

There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.

Not knowing breath, though you tried so hard,
With a heart that beat when you lived with me,
And stopped when you left me for Life.

And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.

Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.

At last you get in-but you hear a step:
The ogre, Life, comes into the room,
(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)
To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,
And stare with his burning eyes at you,
And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,
Running up and down in the trap,
Until your misery bores him.

The pyramid of my life was nought but a dune,
Barren and formless, spoiled at last by the storm.

Hear me, ambitious souls,
Sex is the curse of life.

But I learned about life as well,
And you who loiter around these graves
Think you know life.

They have chiseled on my stone the words:
'His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him
That nature might stand up and say to all the world,
This was a man.

I beat the windows, shook the bolts,
And hid me in a corner-
And then she died and haunted me,
And hunted me for life.

To be judged by you,
The soul of me hidden from you,
With its wound gangrened
By love for a wife who made the wound,
With her cold white bosom, treasonous, pure and hard,
Relentless to the last, when the touch of her hand,
At any time, might have cured me of the typhus,
Caught in the jungle of life where many are lost.

Some there were
Who frowned not on the cup but loathed the rule
Democracy achieved thereby, the freedom
And lust of life it symbolized.

And then they arrested me as a witness,
And I lost my train and staid in Spoon River
To wage my battle of life to the end.

Nothing in life is alien to you:
I was a penniless girl from Summum
Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.

You believed in the joy of life.

Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure--
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!

It may serve a turn in your life.

Break them and dispel the witchcraft
Of thinking your tub is life!

If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?

Then how the picture began to clear
Till the face came forth like life?

We were ready then to walk together
And sing in chorus and chant the dawn
Of life that is wholly life.

And when Adam outwitted God by eating the apple
And saw through the lie,
God drove him out of Eden to keep him from taking
The fruit of immortal life.

But a man can never avenge himself
On the monstrous ogre Life.

Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
Poisoned with the anonymous words
Of your clandestine soul.

I who kept the greenhouse,
Lover of trees and flowers,
Oft in life saw this umbrageous elm,
Measuring its generous branches with my eye,
And listened to its rejoicing leaves
Lovingly patting each other
With sweet aeolian whispers.

Their spirits looked upon my torture;
They drank it as it were the water of life;
With reddened cheeks, brightened eyes,
The rising flame of my soul made their spirits gilt,
Like the wings of a butterfly drifting suddenly into sunlight.

Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you--
It takes life to love Life.

My offense was this:
I said God lied to Adam, and destined him
to lead the life of a fool,
Ignorant that there is evil in the world as well as good.