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BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters --the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.


Ambrose Bierce

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The iambic pentameter owes its pre-eminence in English poetry to its genius for variation. Good blan...
JAMES FENTON I much prefer to write everything by myself. It's kind of difficult. It's like getting undressed in ...
LESLIE FEIST I was born to travel and write verse.
THEOPHILE GAUTIER The earliest form in which romances appear is that of a rude kind of verse.
THOMAS BULFINCH They all always start as an acoustic, living room chorus-and-verse kind of idea.
DAVE DOMBROSKI It was the enchantment of spoken verse that led me to write for children.
WILLIAM JAY SMITH To write a verse or two is all the praise That I can raise
GEORGE HERBERT Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worshi...
ANONYMOUS There are people who think it's easier to write books in verse, and it's definitely not.
ELLEN HOPKINS I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.
ROBERT FROST I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down
ROBERT FROST It will always take a certain audacity to write or to make art of any kind.
CHRIS RASCHKA Poets can't resist the dramatic pull of their lives and so inevitably write autobiographical ver...
JOHN BARTON I write for those who desire, not publication at any cost, but publication one can be proud of--seri...
JOHN GARDNER In a time of serious budget deficits, immense war costs and a sluggish economy, we cannot afford to ...
RON KIND More important is the fact that embryonic stem cell research could lead to new treatments and cures ...
RON KIND Most of the scientific community believes that for the full potential of embryonic stem cell researc...
RON KIND In addition, the oil royalties the Federal Government does not collect from big oil will starve the ...
RON KIND Most of the locks and dams on the upper Mississippi River system are over 60 years old and many are ...
RON KIND While I remain troubled by the Corps' inability to fully justify the Model they used for their c...
RON KIND As many will remember, a respected Army Corps economist filed a whistleblower complaint about the Co...
RON KIND In fact, even the current administration now is releasing recent reports indicating that climate cha...
RON KIND We should see the leadership from the White House setting dates certain for certain goals of achievi...
RON KIND As the President reviewed the state of the union and unveiled his second-term agenda, he fell short ...
RON KIND We have seen what the dependence and addiction to foreign oil has done to us economically.
RON KIND We can all be proud of our men and women in the military who are following their orders, carrying ou...
RON KIND Judicial review has been a part of our democracy in this constitutional government for over 200 year...
RON KIND Over the last few years, the world has become a smaller and more integrated place with technology th...
RON KIND One of the first things I did as a new Member of Congress was help form a bipartisan Mississippi Riv...
RON KIND As founder and co-chair of the upper Mississippi River Congressional task force, I have long sought ...
RON KIND Finally, the ecological health of the Mississippi River and its economic importance to the many peop...
RON KIND In the underlying bill, I think the authors of the legislation, those in support of it, understand t...
RON KIND Give them credit; they shot the ball very well tonight. I don't remember them hitting any outside sh...
JEFF KIND Doing theater, I call it concentrated shampoo. You put a dime in the palm of your hand and you get a...
RICHARD KIND We believe that economics does not necessarily have to be a zero-sum game; it can be a win-win propo...
RON KIND Our help defense was late three times in a row and suddenly it's 13-12. I thought if we could've kep...
JEFF KIND This is a much better feeling than when we were here last time.
JEFF KIND This is a much better feeling than when we were here last time. We wanted to go out on a better note...
JEFF KIND The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any k...
VIRGIL THOMSON Before I joined the project most of the English people with whom I had made personal contacts were l...
KLAUS FUCHS The simple Wordsworth . . . / Who, both by precept and example, shows / That prose is verse, and ver...
LORD BYRON When I write, I don't have any expectation of what kind of song it will become or who it might r...
MACKLEMORE The man who can speak acceptably is usually given credit for an ability out of all proportion to wha...
LOWELL THOMAS New Year - a new chapter, new verse, or just the same old story ? Ultimately we write it. The choice...
ALEX MORRITT In a sense, the story, or poem or verse or whatever it is you're writing, you can kind of think of i...
ALAN MOORE Blow, Boreas, foe to human kind! Blow, blustering, freezing, piercing wind! Blow, that thy for...
JOHN BANCKS (BANKS) We simply write the kind of music we enjoy most and hope that our audience will enjoy it too.
BENNY ANDERSON After the erection of the Chinese Wall of Milton, blank verse has suffered not only arrest but retro...
T.S. ELIOT Write the kind of movie you would want to see, in a genre you love.
DOUGLAS WOOD Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they...
NICOLAS CHAMFORT Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they...
CHAMFORT [The lines that most pleased Anderson as composer are in the second verse:] Show the rainbow of your...
DAN ANDERSON There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.” ~ Ambrose ...
J.J. MCAVOY What really happened was one day I decided to write a new kind of play.
RICHARD FOREMAN My son had toyed with the idea of writing and trying to write a little bit, so that kind of gave me ...
GEORGE STRAIT I push myself in a lot of aspects when I write a song. I write a piece and where most people would s...
DRAKE History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
WINSTON S. CHURCHILL History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
WINSTON CHURCHILL History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
GEORGE CLEMENCEAU History will be kind to me for I intend to write it
WINSTON CHURCHILL ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith.
AMBROSE BIERCE Those of us who write spend our entire lives in an endless English class.
JOSS WHEDON Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to wri...
MALCOLM COWLEY Be kind and considerate with your criticism. . . . It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to...
MALCOLM COWLEY I'm not saying that I'm better than anyone... I'm just saying that I'm one-of-a-kind.
C LIONG A family is like a card game, on one hand, you can get a really bad hand and on the other, your hand...
GARY F EVANS... At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of Engl...
JAMES FENTON Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.
ANDRE PREVIN The types of melodies I tend to write kind of have this bittersweet quality; they're meant to be...
WASHED OUT Human kind cannot bear much reality.
T. S. ELIOT Human kind cannot bear much reality.
T.S. ELIOT I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrument...
LENNY KRAVITZ You cannot write a book unless it is totally inhabiting your imagination and you are totally engross...
KATE FORSYTH Cotton Mather's publications in his own lifetime amounted to more than 400 titles, and his magnu...
EDMUND MORGAN Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to...
MALCOLM COWLEY I kind of got more interested in writing after I turned in my last college essay and nobody was goin...
DAN MILLMAN If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse ...
ROBERT MORGAN Peace enforcement is a much more difficult kind of operation than peacekeeping.
HARRI HOLKERI It was kind of a second family for kids who were directly affected by it. With 100 guys together, it...
ERIC PRICE The songs just sing themselves to me. They kind of write themselves. I just stand back and listen.
CINDY WALKER I like to escape; I like to write when I go on a walk - I'm kind of very fairy that way. I get i...
IMELDA MAY The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot...
ALVIN TOFFLER The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot...
ALVIN TOFFLER We should be inspired by people... who show that human beings can be kind, brave, generous, beautifu...
RACHEL CORRIE I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind...
NICK CAVE I began to write a kind of waltz and in a little more than an hour I had the theme written.
MAURICE JARRE What kind of hard SF do I write? Everything from near-future, Earth-centric techno-thrillers to far-...
EDWARD M. LERNER It's difficult anywhere to find that kind of split. Most places are opposite.
JAY STEWART There are two kinds of love. One kind you live with, the other you write poetry about.
DEBASISH MRIDHA Learning, n. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
AMBROSE BIERCE My first attempt to write about Robert Owen was in the form of poetry. Then I turned it into a blank...
MARGUERITE YOUNG I'm not the kind of writer that can write eight hours a day... I'm the kind of writer that t...
DAVID EBERSHOFF One wants to engage the local judiciary and the local population. It is important that any kind of p...
CHERIF BASSIOUNI It was the kind of story everybody likes, about a tough girl who becomes a truer version of herself ...
CHRIS KRAUS OPTIMISM, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everythi...
AMBROSE BIERCE I write in a pretty straightforward way. I kind of sit down at page one and start writing.
ZACK SNYDER I'm a sensitive guy. If you are a woman and you're in any kind of emotional duress and you write a s...
MATTHEW PERRY RECREATION, n. A particular kind of dejection to relieve a general fatigue.
AMBROSE BIERCE

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AMBROSE BIERCE Bride. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Nominee. A modest gentleman shrinking from the distinction of private life and diligently seeking th...
AMBROSE BIERCE Learning. The kind of ignorance distinguishing the studious.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consult. To seek another's approval of a course already decided on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Happiness is an agreeable sensation, arising from contemplating the misery of others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.
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AMBROSE BIERCE An acquaintance is someone we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to.
AMBROSE BIERCE A temporary insanity curable by marriage.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Let me tell you what a writer is. A writer takes comprehensive views, holds large convictions, makes...
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AMBROSE BIERCE Don't steal; thou it never thus compete successfully in business. Cheat.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Success is the one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Destiny. A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pi...
AMBROSE BIERCE Knowledge is the small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.
AMBROSE BIERCE Erudition. Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.
AMBROSE BIERCE Saint. A dead sinner revised and edited.
AMBROSE BIERCE Insurrection. An unsuccessful revolution; disaffection's failure to substitute misrule for bad gover...
AMBROSE BIERCE Revolution is an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
AMBROSE BIERCE Impiety. Your irreverence toward my deity.
AMBROSE BIERCE Deliberation. The act of examining one's bread to determine which side it is buttered on.
AMBROSE BIERCE Take not God's name in vain; select a time when it will have effect.
AMBROSE BIERCE A prejudice is a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.
AMBROSE BIERCE Bigot, one who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Eulogy. Praise of a person who has either the advantages of wealth and power, or the consideration t...
AMBROSE BIERCE Admiration; is our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves.
AMBROSE BIERCE To bother about the best method of accomplishing an accidental result.
AMBROSE BIERCE A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
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AMBROSE BIERCE A lowly virtue whereby mediocrity achieves a glorious success.
AMBROSE BIERCE Peace, in international affairs, is a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
AMBROSE BIERCE Patience, n. A minor form of dispair, disguised as a virtue.
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AMBROSE BIERCE A man is known by the company he organizes.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Egotist. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than me.
AMBROSE BIERCE An egotist is a person interested in himself than in me!
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AMBROSE BIERCE Opiate. An unlocked door in the prison of Identity. It leads into the jail yard.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Backbite. To speak of a man as you find him when he can't find you.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Wit. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.
AMBROSE BIERCE A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man, who has no gills.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Dog. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the worl...
AMBROSE BIERCE Physician -- One upon whom we set our hopes when ill and our dogs when well.
AMBROSE BIERCE Divorce. A resumption of diplomatic relations and rectification of boundaries.
AMBROSE BIERCE Consul. In American politics, a person who having failed to secure an office from the people is give...
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscien...
AMBROSE BIERCE A cynic is a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, and not as they ought to be.
AMBROSE BIERCE Confidante. One entrusted by A with the secrets of B confided to herself by C.
AMBROSE BIERCE The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.
AMBROSE BIERCE Future. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is ...
AMBROSE BIERCE A funeral is a pageant whereby we attest our respect for the dead by enriching the undertaker.
AMBROSE BIERCE An accident is an inevitable occurrence due to the actions of immutable natural laws.
AMBROSE BIERCE To apologize is to lay the foundation for a future offense.
AMBROSE BIERCE An account, mostly false, of events, mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly k...
AMBROSE BIERCE Historian. A broad -- gauge gossip.
AMBROSE BIERCE Habit is a shackle for the free.
AMBROSE BIERCE Laughter -- An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarti...
AMBROSE BIERCE Litigant. A person about to give up his skin for the hope of retaining his bones.
AMBROSE BIERCE Appeal. In law, to put the dice into the box for another throw.
AMBROSE BIERCE Trial. A formal inquiry designed to prove and put upon record the blameless characters of judges, ad...
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience is a revelation in the light of which we renounce our errors of youth for those of age.
AMBROSE BIERCE Experience. The wisdom that enables us to recognize in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly tha...
AMBROSE BIERCE The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.
AMBROSE BIERCE PROPHECY, n. The art and practice of selling one's credibility for future delivery.
AMBROSE BIERCE When in Rome, do as Rome does.
AMBROSE BIERCE To be positive: to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Bore -- a person who talks when you wish him to listen.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things withou...
AMBROSE BIERCE Architect. One who drafts a plan of your house, and plans a draft of your money.
AMBROSE BIERCE Genealogy. An account of one's descent from an ancestor who did not particularly care to trace his o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Absurdity. A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
AMBROSE BIERCE Abstainer. A weak man who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.
AMBROSE BIERCE Woman absent is woman dead.
AMBROSE BIERCE The covers of this book are too far apart.
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AMBROSE BIERCE The Senate is a body of old men charged with high duties and misdemeanors.
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction of ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Alliance. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserte...
AMBROSE BIERCE ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply in...
AMBROSE BIERCE Acquaintance is a degree of friendship called slight when its object is poor and obscure, and intima...
AMBROSE BIERCE ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn."Eat ...
AMBROSE BIERCE Compromise. Such an adjustment of conflicting interests as gives each adversary the satisfaction o...
AMBROSE BIERCE Convent. A place of retirement for women who wish for leisure to meditate upon the sin of idleness.
AMBROSE BIERCE Religion. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.
AMBROSE BIERCE International arbitration may be defined as the substitution of many burning questions for a smoulde...
AMBROSE BIERCE DIPLOMACY, n. Lying in state, or the patriotic art of lying for one's country.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds. Misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.
AMBROSE BIERCE A bride is a woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her.
AMBROSE BIERCE Painting, n.: The art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic.
AMBROSE BIERCE There are 4 kinds of Homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy.
AMBROSE BIERCE FIDELITY, n. A virtue peculiar to those who are about to be betrayed.
AMBROSE BIERCE ZOOLOGY, n. The science and history of the animal kingdom, including its king, the House Fly ("Mus...
AMBROSE BIERCE HIPPOGRIFF, n. An animal (now extinct) which was half horse and half griffin. The griffin was a com...
AMBROSE BIERCE ZENITH, n. The point in the heavens directly overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A m...
AMBROSE BIERCE YANKEE, n. In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the So...
AMBROSE BIERCE Hypocrisy: prejudice with a halo
AMBROSE BIERCE Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscie...
AMBROSE BIERCE One who is in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Optimism. The doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Women and foxes, being weak, are distinguished by superior tact.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Electricity is the power that causes all natural phenomena not known to be caused by something else.
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AMBROSE BIERCE Positive, adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.
AMBROSE BIERCE Beauty, n: the power by which a woman charms a lover and terrifies a husband.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sweater, n. Garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.
AMBROSE BIERCE Sabbath - a weekly festival having its origin in the fact that God made the world in six days and wa...
AMBROSE BIERCE