Edgar Lee Masters quotes

Edgar Lee Masters was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist, most famous for his "Spoon River Anthology." His work vividly captured the lives and secrets of small-town America through free verse epitaphs. He influenced modern American poetry with his innovative narrative style. Here are 26 of his quotes:

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.

Edgar Lee Masters

In time you shall see Fate approach you In the shape of your own image in the mirror; Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, And you shall know that guest, And read the authentic message of his eyes.

Edgar Lee Masters

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.

Edgar Lee Masters

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

Edgar Lee Masters

Immortality is not a gift, Immortality is an achievement; And only those who strive mightily Shall possess it.

Edgar Lee Masters

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.

Edgar Lee Masters

And when you are poor and have to carry The Christian creed and wife and children All on your back, it is too much! That's why I made the Elixir of Youth, Which landed me in the jail at Peoria Branded a swindler and a crook By the upright Federal Judge!

Edgar Lee Masters

To love is to find your own soul Through the soul of the beloved one.

Edgar Lee Masters

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

Edgar Lee Masters

Beware of the man who rises to power from one suspender.

Edgar Lee Masters

Those who first oppose a good work, seize it and make it their own, when the cornerstone is laid and memorial tablets are erected.

Edgar Lee Masters

What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness, Anger, discontent and drooping hopes? Degenerate sons and daughters, Life is too strong for you- It takes life to love Life.

Edgar Lee Masters

Go by reverently, and read with sober care How a great people, riding with defiant shouts The centaur of Revolution, Spurred and whipped to frenzy, Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea Over the precipice they were nearing, And fell from his back in precipitate awe To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being.

Edgar Lee Masters

In my Spanish cloak, And old slouch hat, And overshoes of felt, And Tyke, my faithful dog, And my knotted hickory cane, I slipped about with a bull's-eye lantern From door to door on the square.

Edgar Lee Masters

Blind as I was, I tried to get out As the carriage fell in the ditch, And was caught in the wheels and killed.

Edgar Lee Masters

You may think, passer-by, that Fate Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, Around which you may walk by the use of foresight And wisdom.

Edgar Lee Masters

Work for your own soul's sake.

Edgar Lee Masters

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea. And the silence of the city when it pauses, And the silence of a man and a maid, And the silence for which music alone finds the word.

Edgar Lee Masters

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.

Edgar Lee Masters

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

Edgar Lee Masters

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

Edgar Lee Masters

The mind sees the world as a thing apart, And the soul makes the world at one with itself. A mirror scratched reflects no image- And this is the silence of wisdom.

Edgar Lee Masters