Quotes: Poetry
Poetry on this page treats language as an act of daring: a space where people try, fail, try again, and find courage in repetition. The selections range from Virgil’s call to boldness to Langston Hughes’s vision of shared freedom and Samuel Beckett’s insistence on persistent effort; together they examine how expression meets the unknown and how voice is forged by risk.
The recurring question is direct: how can one speak what resists speech? These poems explore the tension between clarity and mystery, between striving and acceptance, and between self‑assertion and openness to what lies beyond words.
6 quotes on this theme, each with its source and insight
The quotes
“Fail I alone, in words and deeds? / Why, all men strive and who succeeds?”
Source: The Last Ride Together, 1855 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line is a direct verse from Robert Browning’s poem The Last Ride Together (1855).
Browning turns a lover’s private failure into a wider truth: everyone strives, yet success is never guaranteed. In the dramatic lyric “The Last Ride Together” (1855) the speaker’s questions widen a personal loss into a shared human condition, finding consolation in the dignity of trying.
“Fortune favors the bold.”
Source: Aeneid · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The sentiment is securely Virgilian: it appears in the Aeneid and is spoken in the poem by the character Turnus.
- What remains uncertain
- The familiar English wording is a translation/normalization of the Latin and several Latin variants exist in tradition.
Born as a battle cry, the line claims decisive action wins the favor of Fortune. In Virgil it functions as a martial exhortation—invoking the goddess Fortuna—rather than a pop self-help tip. Over time it turned into a compact proverb about taking risks.
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Source: Worstward Ho (1983) · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line appears in Samuel Beckett's late prose piece Worstward Ho, published in 1983.
Beckett’s line condenses a late-career aesthetic: persistence within limits. In Worstward Ho (1983) the phrase operates as an artistic rule — failure is not a mistake to erase but the material out of which work continues.
“There are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.”
Source: no specific work is documented · Check the source
Disputed attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- Quote investigators report no evidence for this wording in Blake and trace a similar formulation to Ray Manzarek, cited in Newsweek (c.1967).
- What remains uncertain
- The attribution to Blake is likely apocryphal; similarity to Blake’s authentic «doors of perception» line seems to have encouraged the false credit.
The image of «doors» frames knowing as a threshold—what we perceive determines what we can know. The exact wording, however, is not found in Blake; it likely owes its form to later rock‑era paraphrases that echo Blake’s famous line about the doors of perception.
“Just let me be me, that’s the only way I know.”
Source: Let Me Be Me, chorus (lyrics) · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The phrase appears as the chorus of Kendrick Lamar’s song “Let Me Be Me” in published lyric transcriptions (e.g., Genius), establishing him as the author.
This line stakes a claim for unapologetic selfhood: being oneself is presented not as a choice but as the only lived mode. It’s the chorus of Kendrick Lamar’s song “Let Me Be Me,” where repetition turns a personal plea into an emphatic artistic stance within hip-hop culture.
“Whatever is well conceived is clearly said, and the words to say it flow with ease.”
Source: L’Art poétique, 1674 · Check the source
Verified attributionWhat we know
- What is documented
- The line appears in L’Art poétique (1674) and is reliably attributed to Nicolas Boileau‑Despréaux.
Boileau’s line states a simple writing truth: clear thinking produces clear expression. It insists that precision of idea, not decorative language, makes writing intelligible. The couplet appears in L’Art poétique (1674).