Poet Quotes - Page 18

• You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive.

  Toshiko Takaezu

  Artist, Quality, Pieces

  Toshiko Takaezu, Felice Fischer, Darrel Sewell (2004). “The poetry of clay: the art of Toshiko Takaezu”, ACC Distribution

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• The fellow is either a madman or a poet.

  Horace

  Madmen, Fellows

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• Superstition is the poesy of practical life; hence, a poet is none the worse for being superstitious.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Superstitions, Practicals, Practical Life

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1853). “Goethe's Opinions on the World, Mankind, Literature, Science, and Art”, p.111

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• In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Dream, Attitude, Drama

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Poetry and Imagination”, p.24, Editora Dracaena

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• There is a property in the horizon which no man has, but he whose eyes can integrate all the parts,--that is, the poet.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Eye, Men, Horizon

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.9, Harvard University Press

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• Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the children of music.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Men, Talent

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ronald A. Bosco, Joel Myerson (2015). “Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.205, Harvard University Press

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• The poet's habit of living should be set on a key so low that the common influences should delight him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Keys, Delight, Common

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.215, Harvard University Press

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• Poets should be law-givers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspiration, Law, Insult

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1870). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.338, Рипол Классик

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• This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.

  Robert Graves

  Philosophical, Destiny, Seems

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• But that so many scholars are barbarians does not much matter so long as a few of them are ready to help with their specialized knowledge the few independent thinkers, that is to say the poets, who try to to keep civilization alive.

  Robert Graves

  Independent, Civilization, Long

  Robert Graves (2011). “The White Goddess”, p.361, Faber & Faber

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• O lovely river of Yvette!
  O darling river! like a bride,
  Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette
  Thou goest to wed the Orge's tide.
  O lovely river Yvette!
  O darling stream! on balanced wings
  The wood-birds sang the chansonnette
  That here a wandering poet sings.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Wings, Rivers, Bird

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1883). “Longfellow's Poetical Works: With 83 Illustrations by Sir John Gilbert, R.A., and Other Artists”

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• The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fabric, Injury, Streams

  William Shakespeare, Isaac Reed, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens, Charlotte L. Fish (1817). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: In Ten Volumes ; with the Corrections and Illustrations of Dr. Johnson, G. Steevens, and Others”, p.31

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• Of little use, the man you may suppose,
  Who says in verse what others say in prose;
  Yet let me show a poet's of some weight,
  And (though no soldier) useful to the state,
  What will a child learn sooner than a song?
  What better teach a foreigner the tongue?
  What's long or short, each accent where to place
  And speak in public with some sort of grace?

  Alexander Pope

  Song, Children, Men

  Alexander Pope (1829). “An Essay on Man: And Other Poems”, p.156

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• Certainly the modern poets I cherish most are disturbing spirits; they do not come to coo.

  Stanley Kunitz

  Spirit, Cherish, Modern

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• The first movie that made me cry was Dead Poets Society. That one gets me. O Captain! My Captain! That moment kills me.

  David Walton

  Dead Poets Society, Captains, Firsts

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• The revelatory or visionary is the province of the 'private' artist, who in order to render his personal world comprehensible or even tolerable, must force others to believe in it and therefore share it. It is said that 'the poet does not wish to be understood, but to be believed.

  Kenneth Coutts-Smith

  Believe, Artist, Order

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• The philosophers of antiquity taught contempt for work, that degradation of the free man, the poets sang of idleness, that gift from the Gods.

  Paul Lafargue

  Work, Men, Degradation

  Paul Lafargue (2016). “The Right to be Lazy and Other Studies”, p.4, Library of Alexandria

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• There are not many poets whose fame rests on a single work.

  Helen Vendler

  Fame

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• James McMurtry is a true Americana poet - actually he is a poet regardless of genre

  Michael Nesmith

  Genre, Americana

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• What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do is re-engage people with their own humanity.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  People, Humanity, Fiction

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• If I were poet now, I would not resist the temptation to trace my life back through the delicate shadows of my childhood to the precious and sheltered sources of my earliest memories. But these possessions are far too dear and sacred for the person I now am to spoil for myself. All there is to say of my childhood is that it was good and happy. I was given the freedom to discover my own inclinations and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength.

  Hermann Hesse

  Fashion, Memories, Childhood

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• H.L.Mencken's war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.

  Ben Hecht

  Christian, Art, War

  Ben Hecht (1964). “Letters from Bohemia”

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• On sighting mathematicians poetry should unhook the algebra from their minds and replace it with poetry; on sighting poets it should unhook poetry from their minds and replace it with algebra.

  Brian Patten

  Mind, Mathematics, Should

  Brian Patten (2007). “Selected Poems”, ePenguin

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• Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, "If science can't do something therefore religion can.

  Richard Dawkins

  Mean, Writing, Simple

  "Richard Dawkins at the Sydney Writers' Festival". "Science Show" with Robyn Williams, www.abc.net.au. September 8, 2007.

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• For me, musicians are poets. Beethoven describes himself as a poet of tones, just like Coltrane's a poet of tempo.

  Cornel West

  Musician, Tone, Tempo

  Source: www.npr.org

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