Best 1314 quotes in «poet quotes» category

Novelists want to flood, poets want to distill.

Now, I like a church service, but this was one of those write-your-own-vows sorts of things. Neither of them had ever picked up a pen in their life, but all of a sudden they’re poets, right, like that’s all it takes — being in love.

Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.

Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones.

Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what matters is what a reader actually finds there which is usually something both more and less than the poet planned.

Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

Only those of our poets who kept solidly to the Shakespearean tradition achieved any measure of success. But Keats was the last great exponent of that tradition, and we all know how thin, how lacking in charm, the copies of Keats have become.

[On Elizabeth Barrett Browning:] ... for finish, and melody of versification, there is nothing approaching to Miss Barrett in this day, or in any other - also for diction. Her words paint.

One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring.

One thing about being a children's poet or a versifier, is that there is a large market for your wares. These things really made the rounds. I would meet people and they'd quote my poems to me. It's great.

Only when the poet and the scientist work in unison will we have living experiences and knowledge of the marvels of the universe as they are being discovered.

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.

Only the poets can hold the country together, and I wanted to hold Germany together.

Our goal is to publish African poets in as many ways as possible.

Pain makes hens and poets cackle.

Our Poets make us laugh at Tragœdy, And with their Comoedies they make us cry.

Painters and poets have equal license in regard to everything.

Our job is to become more and more of what we are. The growth of a poet seems to be related to his or her becoming less and less embarrassed about more and more.

O woman! thou wert fashioned to beguile: So have all sages said, all poets sung.

Painters and poets alike have always had license to dare anything! We know that, and we both claim and allow to others in their turn this indulgence.

Paul [ Burwell] and I had also got interested in making books. We'd been working with Bob Cobbing, the sound poet, since the beginning of the 70s, and Bob had this press called Writers Forum.

Part of the glamour of being a poet was always this long reach into the future. You knew you were managing time.

Paul Valery speaks of the 'une ligne donnee' of a poem. One line is given to the poet by God or by nature, the rest he has to discover for himself.

Perhaps...I am the face of one of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because I am myself--a Black woman warrior poet doing my work--come to ask you, are you doing yours?

Poetics is a science for stammering poets.

Perhaps no poet is a conscious plagiarist, but there seems to be warrant for suspecting that there is no poet who is not at one time or another an unconscious one.

Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.

Poetry is also the physical self of the poet, and it is impossible to separate the poet from his poetry.

Poetry is an affair of sanity, of seeing things as they are, to recreate the familiar, eternalizing the poet's own perception in unique and original verbal form.

Pilgrims are poets who create by taking journeys.

Poet and sculptor, do the work, / Nor let the modish painter shirk

Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

Poetry is a succession of questions which the poet constantly poses.

Poets arent very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful.

Poets are seen as the caretakers of language, so working with words no matter what the form is what we do.

Poets are the leaven in the lump of civilization.

Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words.

Poets, the first instructors of mankind, Brought all things to the proper native use.

Poets and painters have the power to dare, I mean to dare to do whatever they may approve of.

Poets... are literal-minded men who will squeeze a word till it hurts.

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

Poets can tell the truth as they see it. It’s the author’s story, the author’s voice.

Poets heap virtues, painters gems, at will, And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.

Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results.

Poets, like whores, are only hated by each other.

Poets play with words to keep themselves sane

Poets that lasting marble seek, Must come in Latin or in Greek.

Poets alone are sure of immortality; they are the truest diviners of nature.

Poets and monks... We're both sort of peripheral to the world.