Zoë Akins Quotes

So much do I love wandering, </br> So much I love the sea and sky, </br> That it will be a piteous thing </br> In one small grave to lie!

This world is a very unsafe place. It's all shifting sands, Ned. Shifting sands and changing winds.

And have we lost the right </br> To look on a blooming bough </br> Without remembering how </br> Once with high promising </br> We were a part of spring— </br> We who are now the dead </br> Leaves of other years strewn where flowers spread?

To accuse is so easy that it is infamous to do so where proof is impossible!

Englishmen are like that. They love life more and value it less than any other people in the world.

The success haters. ... That's what I call them—the people who have never got what they want and turned sour on everybody who has. The world's full of them. ... As soon as you've made good they begin to watch for you to fail. ...

Forgetting is the cost </br> Of living cheerfully.

And they shall know that in the ordering </br> Of every world to come the law shall read </br> That he who dares be lawless wears the wing Of bird and prophet and his light shall lead </br> On through the darkness to eventual light, </br> To undiscovered wealth, to newer need. ...

My life is like water that has gone over the dam and turned no mill wheels. Here I am, not happy, but not unhappy, as my days run on to the sea, idly—but not too swiftly—for I love living.

Mine was a love so exquisite that I </br> Rather than watch it wither chose to die: </br> So dress my grave, O friend, with no poor flower </br> Which in your quiet garden blooms an hour!

In all my locked-up songs </br> No one but you belongs.

I know not where I go; I scarcely feel </br> The menacing fatigue about my feet, </br> The skies that scourge, the distances that cheat, the constant wounds that never hurt nor heal.

My cousin Cleofante does not believe in inspiration. She shuns the false energy of all stimulants, even those of criticism and sympathy, when she sets herself to a task. What she does, she does alone—unencouraged, unadvised, unmoved. She has a man’s broad and vital technique, and a man’s ability for thinking straight and far. For years I have watched her work,—coldly, intelligently, solely with the power of her brain,—achieving effects that are in no way miracles, but are matters of technique and deliberation.

Shutting one's eyes is an art, my dear. I suppose there's no use trying to make you see that—but that's the only way one can stay married.

I am the wind that wavers, </br> You are the certain land; </br> I am the shadow that passes </br> Over the sand.