"Though I were gifted with an angel's tongue, And voice like that with which the prophets sung, Yet if mild charity were not within, 'T were all an impious mockery and sin."

"Leaning on thy dear faithful breast, I would resign my breath, And in thy loved embraces lose The bitterness of death."

"I would also suggest that everyone read the poetry of Lucille Clifton, a black heterodox Christian woman who seems to me the most important spiritual poet in America today."

"Other than “the unanswerable question”… It’s the heart speaking, maybe that, maybe the human heart speaking."

"Food in these poems is a connection to the natural world, to what Lucille Clifton calls "the bond of live things everywhere" in her poem, "cutting greens.""

"One of my favorite poets is Lucille Clifton, author of a good number of fine books, including Blessing the Boats, Quilting, and Two-Headed Woman."

"One thing poetry teaches us, if anything, is that everything is connected…There is so much history that we have not validated."

"Lucille stayed late, singing the song of/carrying on, admitting the truth.../"Things don't fall apart. Things hold. Lines connect/in thin ways that last and last . . ."/Lucille gave everything she had."

"… I am a grown-up, sensual woman, even at this age and size. People would think you wouldn't be. I'm open to the whole of human experience."

"… A lot of women have borne a lot of things; a lot of people have borne a lot of things. There’s a certain kind of human that I want to be. There is not shame in my life. There is certainly misfortune, but I’m not the only one. I do know that. And sometimes, one of the things poetry can do is say to an audience: you are not alone. It can also speak for those who have not yet found their voice to speak. That’s part of the human condition. And if we’re going to talk about humans, why are we just going to talk about the pretty ones."

"(The book that...shaped my worldview:) Lucille Clifton’s poetry collection Good Woman. I have long considered her the secret godmother of my writing since I was 15, and this was the first collection of hers I owned."

"born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself?"

"Lucille Clifton is able to do something difficult: take the strengths of poetry and apply them in such a way that you have first-rate prose."

"People I read a lot to my son were people like Robert Bly and Lucille Clifton, Frank O’Hara for some reason, Chinese poems, Japanese poems."

"God gives us ministers of love, Which we regard not, being near; Death takes them from us, then we feel That angels have been with us here!"

"Her suffering ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And breathed the long, long night away In statue-like repose.But when the sun in all his state Illumed the eastern skies, She passed through Glory's morning-gate, And walked in Paradise."

"'T is but a little faded flower, But oh, how fondly dear! 'T will bring me back one golden hour, Through many a weary year."

"Adieu, the city's ceaseless hum, The haunts of sensual life, adieu! Green fields, and silent glens we come, To spend this bright spring-day with you.Whether the hills and vales shall gleam With beauty, is for us to choose; For leaf and blossom, rock and stream, Are coloured with the spirit's hues.Here, to the seeking soul, is brought A nobler view of human fate, And higher feeling, higher thought, And glimpses of a higher state.Through change of time, on sea and shore, Serenely nature smiles away; Yon infinite blue sky bends o'er Our world, as at the primal day.The self-renewing earth is moved With youthful life each circling year; And flowers that Ceres' daughter loved At Enna, now are blooming here.Glad nature will this truth reveal, That God is ours and we are His. O friends, my friends! what joy to feel That He our loving Father is!"

"Where is the heart that doth not keep, Within its inmost core, Some fond remembrance hidden deep, Of days that are no more?"

"Who hath not saved some trifling thing More prized than jewels rare, A faded flower, a broken ring, A tress of golden hair."

"In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding."

"Mind does dominate body. We are superior to the house in which we dwell."

"Let every birthday be a festival, a time when the gladness of the house finds expression in flowers, in gifts, in a little fête. Never should a birthday be passed over without note, or as if it were a common day, never should it cease to be a garlanded milestone in the road of life."

"Self complacency is fatal to progress."

"Every child's birthright is a happy home."

"Fifteen takes its perplexities very seriously and grieves wihout restraint over its sorrows."

"My own opinion is that youthfulness of feeling is retained, as is youthfulness of appearance, by constant use of the intellect."

"On the day long after childhood when I suddenly heard of his death, the sky grew dark above my head. I was walking on a Southern highway, and a friend driving in a pony carriage passed me, stopped and said, "Have you heard that Charles Dickens is dead?" It was as if I had been robbed of one of the dearest of friends."

"One of the first things to be noted in business life is its imperialism. Business is exacting, engrossing, and inelastic."

"Never yet was a spring-time, Late though lingered the snow, That the sap stirred not at the whisper Of the south wind, sweet and low; Never yet was a spring-time When the buds forgot to blow."

"I would not, if I could, give up the memory of the joy I have had in books for any advantage that could be offered in other pursuits or occupations. Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer, what a new discovery is to the scientific student."

"I know,—yet my arms are empty, That fondly folded seven, And the mother heart within me Is almost starved for heaven."

"Once when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung. Each questioned each to know Whence came the Heavens above, and whence the Earth below."

"Day and night my thoughts incline To the blandishments of wine: Jars were made to drain, I think, Wine, I know, was made to drink!"

"Joy may be a miser, But Sorrow’s purse is free."

"&emsp;I have been sojourning late Among the pleasant places of my Past, The green and quiet neighborhoods of Thought, In which I wandered in my wayward youth; With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her—ah when Did I not need her, solitary else?"

"Children are the keys of Paradise. … They alone are good and wise, Because their thoughts, their very lives, are prayer."

"Silence is the speech of love, The music of the spheres above."

"Not what we would, but what we must, Makes up the sum of living; Heaven is both more and less than just In taking and in giving."

"Heaven is not gone, but we are blind with tears, Groping our way along the downward slope of Years!"

"A voice of greeting from the wind was sent, The mists enfolded me with soft white arms, The birds did sing to lap me in content, The rivers wove their charms, And every little daisy in the grass Did look into my face and smile to see me pass."

"There is no death—the thing that we call death Is but another, sadder name for life, Which is itself an insufficient name, Faint recognition of that unknown Life— That Power whose shadow is the Universe."

"All Love is Beauty, and all Beauty—Love!"

"A face at the window, A tap on the pane: Who is it that wants me To-night in the rain?"

"It beckons, I follow. Good by to the light! I am going, oh! whither? Out into the night!"

"We have two lives about us, Two worlds in which we dwell; Within us, and without us, Alternate Heaven and Hell: Without, the somber Real, Within our hearts of hearts, the beautiful Ideal!"

"Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands, Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands, Silent above the flowers, her children lost, Slain by the arrows of the early frost."

"We love in others what we lack ourselves, And would be every thing but what we are."

"There are gains for all our losses, There are balms for all our pain: But when youth, the dream, departs, It takes something from our hearts, And it never comes again."

"Calmer than midnight's deepest bush Is the sun-bright Summer nooning, With its cloudy shadows seeking rest, That fall on the hillside swooning. Great Night with its solemn starry eyes, Over Day's gate asks us whither We go, what our password is, To the camp beyond the river. ..."