Poet Quotes - Page 32

• Language is the machine of the poet.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Machines, Language

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• He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Children, Poetry, Littles

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• What an ornament and safeguard is humor! Far better than wit for a poet and writer. It is a genius itself, and so defends from the insanities.

  Walter Scott

  Humor, Insanity, Ornaments

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• Whatever poets may write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of courts, this is most undoubtedly true,--that shepherds and ministers are both men; their natures and passions the same, the modes of them only different.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Believe, Passion, Writing

  Lord Chesterfield, David Roberts (2008). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.80, Oxford University Press

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• I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Fire, Poetry, Forgiving

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.316, OUP Oxford

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• Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Heart, Home, Tree

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• The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can call an universe from the atom.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Stars, Atoms, Add

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• Poet, forger of ideals, dreamer among the possibilities of life, prophet of the millenium, do you get impatient with the prosaic life around you -- the dulness, and the earthliness, and the brutishness of men? Fret not. Go forward into the realm which stretches before you; climb the highest mountain you can reach, and plant a cross there. The nations will come up to it some day. Work for immortality if you will; then wait for it. If your own age fail to recognize you, a coming age will not.

  J. G. Holland

  Men, Waiting, Dreamer

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• Men of great talents, whether poets or historians, seldom escape the attacks of those who, without ever favoring the world with any production of their own, take delight in criticising the works of others.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Men, Delight, World

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1867). “Don Quixote”, p.317

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• The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not as they ought to have been, but as they really were.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Poetry, May, Historian

  Miguel de CERVANTES SAAVEDRA (1819). “Don Quixote de la Mancha”, p.30

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• For men may prove and use their friends, as the poet expresses it, usque ad aras, meaning that a friend should not be required to act contrary to the law of God.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Friends, Men, Law

  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1867). “Don Quixote”, p.189

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• True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.

  Sophie Swetchine

  Artist, Poetry, Childhood

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• Embellish the soul with simplicity, with prudence, and everything which is neither virtuous nor vicious. Love all men. Walk according to God; for, as a poet hath said, his laws govern all.

  Marcus Aurelius

  Men, Law, Simplicity

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• The world is full of people who have lost faith: politicians who have lost faith in politics, social workers who have lost faith in social work, schoolteachers who have lost faith in teaching and, for all I know, policemen who have lost faith in policing and poets who have lost faith in poetry. It's a condition of faith that it gets lost from time to time, or at least mislaid.

  P. D. James

  Faith, Teaching, People

  P. D. James (2008). “A Taste for Death”, p.280, Faber & Faber

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• England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.

  E. M. Forster

  Voice, Poetry, Waiting

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.733, Delphi Classics

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• It seems to me a purely lyric poet gives himself, right down to his sex, to his mood, utterly and abandonedly, whirls himself roundtill he spontaneously combusts into verse. He has nothing that goes on, no passion, only a few intense moods, separate like odd stars, and when each has burned away, he must die.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sex, Stars, Passion

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• It is a curious thing how poets tend to become ascetics.... Even a debauch for them is a self-flagellation. They go on the loose in cruelty against themselves, admitting that they are pandering to, and despising, the lower self.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Self, Poetry, Admitting

  D. H. Lawrence, George J. Zytaruk, James T. Boulton (2002). “The Letters of D. H. Lawrence”, p.95, Cambridge University Press

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• We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Art, Writing, Reflection

  Michel de Montaigne (1850). “Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c”, p.126

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• To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.

  W. H. Auden

  Grateful, Joy, Males

  1972 Of A E Housman.'A Worcestershire Lad', collected in Forewords and After words (1973).

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• The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.

  W. H. Auden

  Dirty, Writing, Islands

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("Writing"), (p. 22), 1962.

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• A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Writing, Political

  "Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 251), 1972.

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• Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

  W. H. Auden

  Years, Uniforms, Talent

  1940 'The Novelist'.

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• With the farming of a verse
  Make a vineyard of the curse

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Vineyards, Farming

  W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.150, DEBOLS!LLO

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• You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Humiliated

  Entry for April 11, 1979. "Stephen Spender, Journals 1939-1983". Book by Stephen Spender, 1985.

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• The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Distance, Space, Order

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