Poet Quotes

The great poet makes us feel our own wealth, and then we think less of his compositions. His best communication to our mind is to teach us to despise all he has done.

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.

A beautiful woman is a practical poet.

Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.

The saint and poet seek privacy to ends the most public and universal: and it is the secret of culture, to interest the man more in his public, than in his private quality.

Conversation in society is found to be on a platform so low as to exclude science, the saint, and the poet.

All beautiful things bring sadness, nor alone Sweet music, as our wisest Poet spake, Because in us keen longings they awake.

If a poet writes to save his soul, he may save the soul of others.

Bob Dylan truly is a poet whose song is part of the poetry.

Salvation is an individual relationship with God. I've always considered myself to be a devotional poet, and I consider myself to be a devotional novelist.

A poet is seldom hard up for advice. The worst part of it all is that sometimes the advice is coming from other poets, and they ought to know better.

Give me a theme," the little poet cried, "And I will do my part," "'Tis not a theme you need," the world replied; "You need a heart.

A strong, brave man is born each month, each year God gives a sage to men, A poet each ten years, perhaps, but an unselfish person,—when?

To practice your scales, so to speak, in order play the symphony, is what you have to do as a young poet.

I was appointed Poet Laureate. It came totally out of the blue because most Poet Laureates had been considerably older than I. It was not something that I even had begun to dream about!

Stand still, true poet that you are! I know you; let me try and draw you. Some night you'll fail us: when afar You rise, remember one man saw you, Knew you, and named a star!

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not?

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

Poets like Shakespeare know more about poetry than any $25 an hour man.

I am not a nature poet. There is almost always a person in my poems.

When I was young, I was so interested in baseball that my family was afraid I'd waste my life and be a pitcher. Later they were afraid I'd waste my life and be a poet. They were right.

Never use the word 'audience.' The very idea of a public, unless the poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an 'audience'. They're talking to a single person all the time.

The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.

Ko Un is a crucial poet for the twenty-first century, and this is an enormously fresh and vivid translation.

The record of poetry in the 20th century isn't all that great anyway. Most of the poets who weren't fascists were Stalinists.

Where politics is concerned, I think poets have to be pragmatists, philosophical pragmatists.

Someone in Ireland asked me how many Republican poets there were in the U.S., and I thought maybe two. Maybe there are 10,000 poets, and maybe there are two Republicans among them.

After all, the commonplaces are the great poetic truths.

The Black Mountain poet I like most is the early Creeley. Those early poems seem very lyrical and very traditional, with a lot of voice and character.

Poets are sultans, if they had their will; For every author would his brother kill.

The poet, like the lover, is a menace on the assembly line.

Maybe lurking in my unconscious was the idea that when someone's collected poems are published it means that the poet is dead. I found myself looking at my work as if I were at my own funeral.

It seems more than likely that the translating of poetry is going to rub off on the translator if he or she is a poet.

Love manufactures every man into a poet while the fever lasts.

The poet has to make a synthesis out of the moral life of our time, and this life is lived at this moment on a political plane.

The poets get a quizzical ahem. They reflect time, I am the very ticking.

They are fools who kiss and tell'-- Wisely has the poet sung. Man may hold all sorts of posts If he'll only hold his tongue.

The poets who do this are uniquely conscious of this silence, this stillness.

A poet or a comedian can say what's on the mind of people. They should be funny. They should make you laugh. It may be so truthful that it hurts, but it makes you laugh.

Chekhov is this poet of melancholy and isolation and of wishing you were somewhere else than where you are.

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

Thus, the poet's word is beginning to strike forcefully upon the hearts of all men, while absolute men of letters think that they alone live in the real world.

I'm a poet who practices Zen. And it's not, I'm somebody who practices Zen who writes poetry. There's no separation for me.

A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.

The stream of Time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabrics of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of Shakespeare.

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet.

...it will not always happen that the success of a poet is proportionate to his labor.

The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances.

An undevout poet is an impossibility.

The poet is the man made to solve the riddle of the universe who brings the whole soul of man into activity.