Verses Quotes - Page 10

• My brain is dull, my sight is foul,
  I cannot write a verse, or read--
  Then, Pallas, take away thine Owl,
  And let us have a lark instead.

  Thomas Hood

  Sex, Writing, Sight

  Thomas Hood, Frances F. Broderip (1860). “Memorials: In 2 Vol”, p.339

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• Unhappie Verse, the witnesse of my unhappie state,
  Make thy selfe fluttring wings of thy fast flying
  Thought

  Edmund Spenser

  Wings, Poetry, Flying

  Edmund Spenser, Henry John Todd (1859). “The Works of Edmund Spenser: With a Selection of Notes from Various Commentators; and a Glossarial Index: to which is Prefixed, Some Account of the Life of Spenser”, p.15

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• I always look for a "rhythm" in my writing. A cadence to the sentences. Sometimes I think of pieces I write in a song writing infrastructure - i.e., a verse, a chorus that I return to, a bridge that's something differenct, a chorus that I return to.

  Mitch Albom

  Song, Writing, Thinking

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• I have never injured anybody with a mordant poem; my
  verse contains charges against nobody. Ingenuous, I have
  shunned wit steeped in venom--not a letter of mine is dipped
  in poisonous jest.

  Ovid

  Poetry, Letters, Jest

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• Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.

  Herman Melville

  Poetry, Events, Literature

  Herman Melville, Robert C. Ryan, Hershel Parker (2009). “Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville”, p.443, Northwestern University Press

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• When talent fails, indignation writes the verse.

  Juvenal

  Writing, Talent, Failing

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• Functions of technical information, historic record, analytic argument, which are integral and obvious to Dante's use of verse are now almost completely a part of the 'prosaic'.

  George Steiner

  Poetry, Use, Records

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• Much contemporary verse reads like failed short-short stories rather than failed poetry.

  Alice Fulton

  Poetry, Stories, Literature

  Alice Fulton (1999). “Feeling as a Foreign Language: The Good Strangeness of Poetry”

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• The immediate success of the war poem anthologies ... proved that the war had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse ... There has never before, in the world's history, been an epoch which has tolerated and even welcomed such a flood of verse as has been poured forth over Great Britain during the last three years.

  Edmund Gosse

  War, Years, Poetry

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• Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong,
  And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.

  John Keats

  Song, Sweet, Poetry

  'To George Felton Mathew' (1817) l. 1

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• My verses are my diary. My poetry is a poetry of proper names.

  Marina Tsvetaeva

  Names, Poetry, Diaries

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• I would have any one, who really and truly has leisure and ability, make verses. I think it a more refining and happy-making occupation than any other pastime accomplishment.

  Sara Coleridge

  Thinking, Accomplishment, Leisure

  Sara Coleridge Coleridge (1873). “Memoir and Letters”, p.128

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• Women are not apt to be won by the charms of verse.

  Bayard Taylor

  Charm, Wooing

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• As a rapper, your verses are like a window in to who you are.

  Andre Benjamin

  Rapper, Window, Who You Are

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• A translation in verse . . . seems to me something absurd, impossible.

  Victor Hugo

  Impossible, Absurd, Translations

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• I don't quite recollect how many tumblers of whiskey toddy each man drank after supper; but this I know, that about one o'clock in the morning, the baillie's grown-up son became insensible while attempting the first verse of 'Willie brewed a peck o' maut'; and he having been, for half an hour before, the only other man visible above the mahogany, it occurred to my uncle that it was almost time to think about going.

  Charles Dickens

  Funny, Morning, Uncles

  Charles Dickens (2016). “The Pickwick Papers: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.554, Pan Macmillan

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• Poetry speaks most effectively and inclusively (whether in free or formal verse) when it recognizes its connection - without apology - to its musical and ritualistic origins.

  Dana Gioia

  Art, Apology, Poetry

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• Thought must be hidden in the verse like nutritional virtue in a fruit.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Poetry, Fruit

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• Verse is a mechanism by which we can create interpretative illusions suggesting profoundities of response and understanding which far exceed the engagement or research of the writer.

  John Constable

  Art, Poetry, Understanding

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• The power of verse stems from an indefinable harmony between when it says and what it is.

  Paul Valery

  Art, Poetry, Harmony

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• My verses, I cannot say poems. . . . I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Millay, unhappily in my own horrible sneakers.

  Dorothy Parker

  Sneakers, Missing, Horrible

  Dorothy Parker (1996). “The Uncollected Dorothy Parker”, Bloomsbury Academic

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• In sober mornings do not thou rehearse
  The holy incantation of a verse

  Robert Herrick

  Morning, Poetry, Sober

  Robert Herrick (1852). “Hesperides; or, Works both human and divine”, p.39

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• In love, a verse of Mimnermus has more power than one of Homer.

  Propertius

  Power, Poetry, Poet

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• On paper curiously shaped
  Scribblers to-day of every sort,
  In verses Valentines ycled'd
  To Venus chime their annual court.
  I too will swell the motley throng,
  And greet the all auspicious day,
  Whose privilege permits my song
  My love this secret to convey.

  Henry George Bohn

  Song, Valentine, Secret

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• Show me a man who feels bitterly toward John Brown, and let me hear what noble verse he can repeat. He'll be as dumb as if his lips were stone.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Character, Men, Dumb

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1221, Delphi Classics

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