Poet Quotes
The adoption of the required attitude of mind towards ideas that seem to emerge "of their own free will" and the abandonment of the critical function that is normally in operation against them seem to be hard of achievement for some people. The "involuntary thoughts" are liable to release a most violent resistance, which seeks to prevent their emergence. If we may trust that great poet and philosopher Friedrich Schiller, however, poetic creation must demand an exactly similar attitude.
Sigmund Freud
Greece, sound, thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name, But England's Milton equals both in fame.
William Cowper
The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The real giants have always been poets, men who jumped from facts into the realm of imagination and ideas.
William Bernbach
He saw wan Woman toil with famished eyes; He saw her bound, and strove to sing her free. He saw her fall'n; and wrote "The Bridge of Sighs"; And on it crossed to immortality.
William Watson
Nobody has to tell nobody nothing,” I say, taking another step forward. “You never were a poet, were you, Todd?” he says.
Patrick Ness
Great wine requires a mad man to grow the vine, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to make it, and a lover to drink it.
Salvador Dali
For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.
Plato
Modern poets are bells of lead. They should tinkle melodiously but usually they just klunk.
Lord Dunsany
A poet should leave traces of his passage, not proofs. Traces alone engender dreams.
Rene Char
I'm inspired by playwrights, novelists, poets: The value of language has been a lifelong passion of mine. I enjoy it. I'm good at it.
Yasiin Bey
Black Star
Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.
Gaston Bachelard
