Top 15 Edgar Lee Masters Quotes

To this generation I would say:
Memorize some bit of verse of truth or beauty.

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.

The tongue may be an unruly member — But silence poisons the soul.

In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror.

I have studied many times
The marble which was chiseled for me — A boat with a furled sail at rest in a harbor.
In truth it pictures not my destination
But my life.
For love was offered me and I shrank from its disillusionment;
Sorrow knocked at my door, but I was afraid;
Ambition called to me, but I dreaded the chances.
Yet all the while I hungered for meaning in my life.
And now I know that we must lift the sail
And catch the winds of destiny
Wherever they drive the boat.
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.

And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle — And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

the much-sought prize of eternal youth
Is just arrested growth.

It takes life to love life.

There is no marriage in Heaven, but there is love.

Act well your part,
there all the honor lies.

I tramped through the country
To get the feeling
That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
I used to lose myself
By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
Sometimes I talked with animals…

The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, why fiddle you must, for all your life.

FIDDLER JONES

The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind's in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for the market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts.
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to Toor-a-Loor.
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a will-mill – only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle –
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?

This is life's sorrow:
That one can be happy only where two are;
And that our hearts are drawn to stars
Which want us not.