Poet Quotes - Page 23

• For, whom the Muses smile upon,
  And touch with soft persuasion,
  His words like a storm-wind can bring
  Terror and beauty on their wing;
  In his every syllable
  Lurketh nature veritable.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wind, Wings, Poetry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.137, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Men consort in camp and town
  But the poet dwells alone.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Men, Poetry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.152, The Floating Press

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• The poet needs a ground in popular tradition on which he may work, and which, again, may restrain his art within the due temperance. It holds him to the people, supplies a foundation for his edifice; and, in furnishing so much work done to his hand, leaves him at leisure, and in full strength for the audacities of his imagination.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Creativity, Hands

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1619, Delphi Classics

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• A poet is no rattlebrain, saying what comes uppermost, and, because he says every thing, saying, at last, something good; but a heart in unison with his time and country. There is nothing whimsical or fantastic in his production, but sweet and sad earnest, freighted with the weightiest convictions, and pointed with the most determined aim which any man or class knows of in his times.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Sweet, Heart

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Emerson's Essays: Top Essays”, p.110, 谷月社

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• It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Daughter, Spring, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1624, Delphi Classics

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• The world still wants its poet-priest, a reconciler, who shall not trifle with Shakspeare the player, nor shall grope in graves with Swedenborg the mourner; but who shall see, speak, and act, with equal inspiration. For knowledge will brighten the sunshine; right is more beautiful than private affection; and love is compatible with universal wisdom.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Beautiful, Inspiration, Sunshine

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.162

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• Nor sequent centuries could hit
  Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit.
  The men who lived with him became
  Poets, for the air was fame.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Air, Poetry

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2015). “Poems”, p.240, The Floating Press

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• There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Exercise, Poetry, Humanity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2011). “Natural Abundance: Ralph Waldo Emerson's Guide to Prosperity”, p.184, Simon and Schuster

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• Milton says, that the lyric poet may drink wine and live generously, but the epic poet, he who shall sing of the gods, and their descent unto men, must drink water out of a wooden bowl. For poetry is not "Devil's wine," but God's wine.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Wine, Epic

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1425, Delphi Classics

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• To the birds and trees he talks:
  Caesar of his leafy Rome,
  There the poet is at home.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Home, Rome

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Emerson: Poems”, p.197, Everyman's Library

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• For this present, hard
  Is the fortune of the bard,
  Born out of time;
  All his accomplishment,
  From Nature's utmost treasure spent,
  Booteth not him.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Accomplishment, Poetry, Treasure

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.44, Cosimo, Inc.

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• That is what all poets do: they talk to themselves out loud; and the world overhears them. But it's horribly lonely not to hear someone else talk sometimes.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Lonely, Poetry, World

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: The Collected Plays (Illustrated): 60 plays including Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan, The Apple Cart, Cymbeline, Androcles And The Lion, The Man Of Destiny, The Inca Of Perusalem and Macbeth Skit”, p.500, e-artnow

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• Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Moving, Men, Effort

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• When I see that the nineteenth century has crowned the idolatry of Art with the deification of Love, so that every poet is supposed to have pierced to the holy of holies when he has announced that Love is the Supreme, or the Enough, or the All, I feel that Art was safer in the hands of the most fanatical of Cromwell's major generals than it will be if ever it gets into mine.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Art, Love Is, Hands

  George Bernard Shaw (2006). “Three Plays for Puritans”, p.34, Penguin UK

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• O heart, be at peace, because
  Nor knave nor dolt can break
  What's not for their applause,
  Being for a woman's sake.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Poetry, Sake

  William Butler Yeats (2011). “Selected Poems And Four Plays”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• O cloud-pale eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
  The poets labouring all their days
  To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
  Are overthrown by a woman's gaze.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Dream, Women

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.54, Wordsworth Editions

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• I have heard that hysterical women say
  They are sick of the palette and fiddle-bow,
  Of poets that are always gay

  William Butler Yeats

  Gay, Sick, Poetry

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.250, Wordsworth Editions

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• I thought of rhyme alone,
  For rhyme can beat a measure out of trouble
  And make the daylight sweet once more.

  William Butler Yeats

  Happiness, Sweet, Poetry

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.142, Simon and Schuster

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• All think what other people think;
  All know the man their neighbor knows.
  Lord, what would they say
  Did their Catullus walk that way?

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Thinking, Gossip

  "The Scholars" l. 9 (1919)

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• Poetry and music I have banished,
  But the stupidity
  Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
  Makes no demand.
  I bend my body to the spade
  Or grope with a dirty hand.

  William Butler Yeats

  Music, Dirty, Roots

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.325, Simon and Schuster

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• Some moralist or mythological poet
  Compares the solitary soul to a swan;
  I am satisfied with that,
  Satisfied if a troubled mirror show it,
  Before that brief gleam of its life be gone.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beauty, Swans, Mirrors

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.177, Wordsworth Editions

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• Even the wisest man grows tense
  With some sort of violence
  Before he can accomplish fate,
  Know his work or choose his mate.
  
  Poet and sculptor, do the work,
  Nor let the modish painter shirk

  William Butler Yeats

  Wisdom, Art, Fate

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.334, Simon and Schuster

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• Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Men, Soul, Vision

  Woodrow Wilson, Howard Seavoy Leach (1970). “The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: Authorized Ed”

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• Poetry is the renewal of words, setting them free, and that's what a poet is doing: loosening the words.

  Robert Frost

  Poetry, Renewal, Settings

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• Let's get my incantation right:
  "I wish I may, I wish I might"
  Give earth another satellite.

  Robert Frost

  Giving, Poetry, Wish

  Robert Frost (1971). “The poetry of Robert Frost”

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