Poet Quotes
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Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.
Honore de Balzac
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Truth is far and flat, and fancy is fiery; and truth is cold, and people feel the cold, and they may wrap themselves against it in fancies that are fiery, but they should not call them facts; and, generally, poets do not; they are shrewd, they feel the cold, too, but they know a hawk from a handsaw, a fact from a fancy, as none knows better.
Stevie Smith
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Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
Richard Feynman
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The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.
Emily Dickinson
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If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.
Juan Felipe Herrera
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Although Poets are vain and ambitious, their vanity and ambition are of the purest kind attainable in this world. They are ambitious to be accepted for what they altimately are as revealed in their poetry.
Stephen Spender
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In most men there exists a poet who died young, whom the man survived.
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
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I'm a failed poet. Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first, finds he can't, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.
William Faulkner
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Poets can tell the truth as they see it. It’s the author’s story, the author’s voice.
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.
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A true poet is more than just a man who can write a poem with a pen. A true poet writes poetry with his very life. A true poet doesn't use poetic devices to con the heart of a woman but uses the beauty of all that is poetic to serve, cherish, and express love to the heart of a woman. Just as a true warrior is not a conqueror of femininity but a protector of femininity, a true poet is not just a wooer of a woman's heart but one who knows how to nurture and plant love in a woman's heart. Simply put, a true poet is a man who knows how to be intimate with a lover - first and foremost with Christ.
Eric Ludy
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Everyone is born a poet - a person discovering the way words sound and work, caring and delighting in words. I just kept on doing what everyone starts out doing. The real question is: Why did other people stop?
William Stafford
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a person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time.
Vladimir Nabokov
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Campion is a poet who knows that what a poet sees is nothing without a mixture of formal prowess and emotional insight.
David Biespiel
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Let all Black Poets die as trumpets,
And be buried in the dust of marching feet.
Etheridge Knight
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As for what I have done as a poet, I take no pride in whatever. Excellent poets have lived at the same time with me, poets more excellent lived before me, and others will come after me. But that in my country I am the only person who knows the truth in the difficult science of colors-of that, I say, I am not a little proud, and here have a consciousness of superiority to many.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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I was strong and tough enough and charming. / How else is a fat Jew lesbian poet gonna get by? / Listening to the radio, staying home, staying alone, like / they mean us to. / Who means you to be left out? / Who don't?
Elana Dykewomon
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The mind of a poet often performs miracles-a few coarse-grained words, apprehended become bullets and roses.
Amado V. Hernandez
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My love is a thousand French poets puking black blood on your Cure CD collection.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag