Poet Quotes

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.

We are born poets. we become orators.

Democritus maintains that there can be no great poet without a spite of madness.

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

There has never been a poet or orator who thought another better than himself.

I have never yet known a poet who did not think himself super-excellent.

About no subject are poets tempted to lie so much as about their own lives.

The truth, it seems, is not just what you find when you open a door: it is itself a door, which the poet is always on the verge of going through.

I became a poet at the age of sixteen. I did not intend to do it. It was not my fault.

I think the obligation of a poet is not to be in an ivory tower; it is not to be isolated but to be among people.

Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet.

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

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.

I always hesitate to call myself a children's poet, and I always hesitate to call what I write for children poetry. Though a few of the verses that I've written, yes, I think they are truly poems.

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

A poet's interest in craft never fades, of course.

The challenge is to keep up with all the new poets at the same time I love the old ones.

I consider myself kind of a reporter - one who uses words that are more like music and that have a choreography. I never think of myself as a poet; I just get up and write.

[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.

I'm much more of a musician than a poet. I just feel much more confident about my musical abilities.

We are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet; but he was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived.

As a poet and as an actress, we're taught to be far more elaborate with our words and - I wouldn't say generalize, but definitely stronger with our choices.

Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.

To be a poet you have to experiment.

Not deep the poet sees, but wide.

Coleridge: poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.

Ah! two desires toss about The poet's feverish blood; One drives him to the world without, And one to solitude.

That choice to be ready to reject all other purposes, in favor of the possibilities of language freed from utility, is when the writer becomes a poet.

It is clear that we do not exactly choose our poems; our poems choose us.

The poet must be free to love or hate as the spirit moves him, free to change, free to be a chameleon, free to be an enfant terrible. He must above all never worry about this effect on other people.

Time spent with poets is never wasted.

a poet never feels useful.

Words are my passion / And out of them and me / I would create beauty.

If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.

Master Sigmund Freud once said that wherever I go, I find a poet has been there before me. This is simply because science either walks or runs but art has wings to fly!

I'm not the kind of poet who arranges treasure-hunts to please the academics and keep them busy. Poetry should be surprising in deeper ways.

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

A French poet famously referred to the aroma of certain cheeses as the ‘pieds de Dieu’—the feet of god. Just to be clear: foot odor of a particularly exalted quality, but still—foot odor.

We're football people, not poets, but obviously I'm disappointed with the result.

In the end, time is the best ally of poets. It clarifies their works and makes them accessible to an ever widening circle of readers.

The solitude of the poet is the uniqueness of his experience, and the particulaity of his sensitivity and imagination.

Nay, what is worse, perhaps turn poet, which, they say, is an infectious and incurable distemper.

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.

Bob Altman got nothing from the TV series 'M*A*S*H,' and the royalties for the theme song went to his oldest son, Michael, who wrote it as a 15-year-old poet!

I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot

Poems are taught as though the poet has put a secret key in his words and it is the reader's job to find it. Poems are not mystery novels.

Once, I was a poet, and, like all poets, I spent too long in the Kingdom of Dreams.

I like it when someone gives me a new book of poetry by a poet I haven't read.

Constellations shine with light that was emitted aeons ago, and I wait for something to come to me, words that a poet might use to illuminate life's mysteries. But there is nothing.

Many good poets are really essayists who write very short essays.