Poet Quotes
-
What poet would not grieve to see
His brother write as well as he?
But rather than they should excel,
He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
Jonathan Swift
-
Nobody has to tell nobody nothing,” I say, taking another step forward. “You never were a poet, were you, Todd?” he says.
Patrick Ness
-
For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.
Plato
-
They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own.
William Cowper
-
Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
-
When a writer becomes a reader of his or her own work, a lot can go wrong. It's like do-it-yourself dentistry.
William Collins
-
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
-
James McMurtry is a true Americana poet - actually he is a poet regardless of genre...
Michael Nesmith
The Monkees
-
When I have had enough of tears and love, I turn to some poet, and set out again for a new world.
Xavier de Maistre
-
In general, I would think that at present prose writers are much in advance of the poets. In the old days, I read more poetry than prose, but now it is in prose where you find things being put together well, where there is great ambition, and equal talent. Poets have gotten so careless, it is a disgrace. You can’t pick up a page. All the words slide off.
William H. Gass
-
I think humor is a very serious thing. I use it as a way of weakening the reader's defenses so that I can more easily take him to something more.
William Collins
-
For not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them he is conversing with us.
Plato
