50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in Ariel by Sylvia Plath

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#11: “And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die.” 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Metaphor, simile, allusion 

#12: “Dying/ Is an art, like everything else./ I do it exceptionally well” 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Metaphor, imagery

Life Quotes by Sylvia Plath

#13: “Nick and the Candlestick” (title)

• Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962)
• Techniques: Cultural allusion, personal reference, metaphor 

#14: “Old cave of calcium/ Icicles, old echoer”

• Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962)
• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism, juxtaposition

#15: “A piranha/ Religion, drinking/ Its first communion out of/ my live toes” 

• Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962) 
• Techniques: Symbolism, dark imagery, biblical allusion, juxtaposition

#16: “Lady Lazarus” (title) 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962)
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, symbolism 

#17: “I do it so it feels like hell./ I do it so it feels real” 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Anaphora

#18: “Out of ash, I rise with my red hair/ And I eat men like air” 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism, phoenix imagery, simile 

#19: “I think I am going up/ I think I may rise-”

• Poem: Fever 103 
• Techniques: Repetition, metaphor 

#20: “By kisses, by cherubin… to Paradise”

• Poem: Fever 103 
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, metaphor, paradisiacal imagery 

#21: “I would say it was the coffin of a midget / Or a square baby.” 

• Poem: The Arrival of the Bee Box
• Techniques: Oxymoron, metaphor 

Sylvia Plath Quotes about Love

#22: “The blood blooms clean / In you, ruby” 

• Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962) 
• Techniques: Symbolism, metaphor, recurring motif

#23: Love, love/ I have hung our cave with roses,/ With soft rugs-” 

• Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962) 
• Techniques: Repetition, imagery 

#24: “You are the baby in the barn.”

• Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962) 
• Techniques: Biblical allusion 

#25: “Love, love… From me like Isadora’s scarves, I’m in a fright”

• Poem: Fever 103 (1963)
• Techniques: Repetition, simile, American cultural allusion 

#26: “Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin/ Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.”

• Poem: Fever 103 (1963) 
• Techniques: Cultural allusion, religious allusion, high modality 

#27: “Am a pure acetylene / Virgin”

• Poem: Fever 103 (1963)
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, metaphor 

Oppression Quotes

#28: “The boot in the face, the brute/ Brute heart of a brute like you.” 

• Poem: Daddy (1962)
• Techniques: Anaphora, Allusion

#29: “I began to talk like a Jew/ I think I may well be a Jew” 

• Poem: Daddy (1962)
• Techniques: Epistrophe, Historical Allusion, Holocaust Imagery

#30: “Ich, ich, ich, ich,/ I could hardly speak”

• Poem: Daddy (1962)
• Techniques: Repetition, historical allusion

#31: “You do not do, you do not do/ Any more, black shoe/ In which I have lived like a foot” 

• Poem: Daddy (1962)
• Techniques: Antanaclasis, epizeuxis, metaphor, literary allusion, simile

#32: “Measuring the flour, cutting off the surplus,/ Adhering to rules, to rules, to rules” 

• Poem: A Birthday Present (1962) 
• Techniques: Repetition, allusion 

#33: “Must you kill what you can?”

• Poem: A Birthday Present (1962) 
• Techniques: Rhetorical question, cultural allusion 

#34: “My sheets, the cold dead center/ Where split lives congeal and stiffen to history” 

• Poem: A Birthday Present (1962) 
• Techniques: Allusion, metaphor 

#35: “Bright as a Nazi lampshade/ My right foot/ A paper weight, My face a featureless, fine/ Jew linen” 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Historical allusion, metaphor, morbid imagery 

#36: “The peanut-crunching crowd…Them unwrap me hand and foot-/ The big strip tease” 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism, sexual imagery 

#37: “There is a charge// For eyeing of my scars… for a word or a touch/ Or a bit of blood.”

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962)
• Techniques: Metaphor, symbolism, dark imagery 

#38: “Ash, ash- / You poke and stir. / Flesh, bone, there is nothing there- 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Historical allusion, metaphor, morbid imagery 

#39: “So, so Herr God, Herr Lucifer/ Beware/ Beware.”

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Historical allusion, biblical allusion

#40: “I am your opus / I am your valuable / The pure gold baby.” 

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962) 
• Techniques: Repetition, symbolism, metaphor 

#41: “Are dull, dull as triple/ Tongues of dull, fat Cerberus… Incapable Of licking clean” 

• Poem: Fever 103 (1963)
• Techniques: Epizeuxis, metaphor, mythological allusion, infernal imagery 

#42: “Like Hiroshima ash and eating in. The sin. The sin.”

• Poem: Fever 103 (1963)
• Techniques: Historical allusion, repetition 

#43: “Your body/ Hurts me as the world hurts God.” 

• Poem: Fever 103 (1963)
• Techniques: Biblical allusion, metaphor 

#44: “With the swarmy feeling of African hands”

• Poem: The Arrival of the Bee Box (1965) 
• Techniques: Allusion, metaphor, dark imagery 

#45: “I am not a Ceasar” 

• Poem: The Arrival of the Bee Box (1965) 
• Techniques: Historical allusion, metaphor 

#46: “Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.” 

• Poem: The Arrival of the Bee Box (1965)
• Techniques: Biblical allusion

Quotes about Loneliness by Sylvia Plath

#47: “tears / The earthen womb / Exudes from its dead boredom” 

• Poem: Nick and the Candlestick (1962) 
• Techniques: Enjambment, metaphor 

#48: “They had to call and call/ And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls”

• Poem: Lady Lazarus (1962)
• Techniques: Simile, symbolism, repetition, allusion 

#49: “The unintelligible syllables / It is like a Roman mob,”

• Poem: The Arrival of the Bee Box (1965) 
• Techniques: Historical allusion, metaphor 

#50: “They might ignore me immediately/ In my moon suit and funeral veil.” 

• Poem: The Arrival of the Bee Box (1965)
  
• Techniques: Dark imagery, symbolism