Edith Hamilton Quotes

None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

Edith Hamilton

• Pain
• Poetry
• Tragedy

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Quotes to Explore

• Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

  

  Joanne Rowling
  • Myself
  • Poetry
  • Now And Then

• Jews are not part of a European ruling class imposed on helpless natives, but are caught up in a tragedy in which two peoples are struggling for the same piece of land.

  

  Jack Schwartz
  • Up
  • Same
  • Tragedy

• I want to prove that if you write in strict meter and rhyme about subjects people care about, they will buy poetry.

  

  Felix Dennis
  • People
  • Care
  • Poetry

• I think poetry's always a kind of faith. It is the kind that I have.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Think
  • Faith
  • Poetry

• I believe much of the pain of a breakup comes from having a life plan that you have fallen in love with. When it does not work out, you become angry that you now have to pursue a new life plan.

  

  Karen Salmansohn
  • Life
  • Work
  • Believe

• If I'm feeling desperate, I'll go out image-hunting. I'll go to news agents and stand at the rack flicking through magazines or go to second-hand bookshops. And then, bit by bit, like concrete poetry, I start to realise that I am drawn to particular things, and then I start wondering why that is.

  

  Gary Hume
  • Poetry
  • Hunting
  • Desperate

• A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Poet
  • Survive
  • Can

• Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

  

  Walter Pater
  • Done
  • Art
  • Help

• History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

  

  Karl Marx
  • History
  • First
  • Tragedy

• I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.

  

  Carl Sandburg
  • Myself
  • Poetry
  • Understand

• Our pain hides beneath these fluttering, random thoughts that run through our heads in an endless loop. But there's so much freedom in getting to know what's under there, the bedrock.

  

  Dani Shapiro
  • Freedom
  • Pain
  • Thoughts

• Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

  

  T. S. Eliot
  • Want
  • Poetry
  • Personality

• The Scottish Highlands are incredible. There seems to be magic and poetry everywhere.

  

  Caitriona Balfe
  • Poetry
  • Magic
  • Seems

• I was trying to pay the bills with poems, and it was easy to memorize my poems, because I'd be riding my bike in California trying to memorize them before going on stage at a poetry lounge.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • Trying
  • Poetry
  • California

• Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.

  

  Carl Sandburg
  • Poetry
  • Door
  • Moment

• I know it's a film and all of that, and it's a Hollywood film, but it kind of feels like this sometimes, when you're in pain and it hurts, and you're desperate. Or you are about to cross some moral line and it's so seductive and you just do... and all that.

  

  Patrick Marber
  • Know
  • Pain
  • Moral

• I trust people too much, and the other tragedy is I can't say no.

  

  Farooq Abdullah
  • People
  • Trust
  • Tragedy

• We are certainly in a common class with the beasts; every action of animal life is concerned with seeking bodily pleasure and avoiding pain.

  

  Saint Augustine
  • Life
  • Action
  • Pain

• There are several more careers more engaging to follow than that of poetry. But the circumstances of one's birth, the conduct of one's parents, the current economic structure of society, and a thousand other local factors have as much or more to say about successions to such occupations, the naive volitions of the poet to the contrary.

  

  Hart Crane
  • Society
  • Poetry
  • Circumstances

• California is a queer place in a way, it has turned its back on the world, and looks into the void Pacific. It is absolutely selfish, very empty, but not false, and at least, not full of false effort.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • World
  • Effort
  • California

• A pig resembles a saint in that he is more honored after death than during his lifetime.

  

  Irma S. Rombauer
  • Death
  • Honored
  • Pig

• One of the biggest mistakes people make when they cook for other people is to think that it has to be fancy and elaborate. This results in enormous expense and nine days of labor, plus you end up trying to assemble a croquembouche in front of your guests and everyone's experiencing flop sweat.

  

  Ted Allen
  • People
  • Up
  • Trying

• I don't want to spend my life in my 40s feeling bad about being in my 40s, and then all of a sudden I'm 50, and I will have missed a whole decade!

  

  Laura Linney
  • Life
  • Bad
  • Want

• None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.

  

  Edith Hamilton
  • Pain
  • Poetry
  • Tragedy