Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.
A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.
What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.
A novel is a work of poetry. In order to write it, one must have tranquility of spirit and of impression.
The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.
Most people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honour.
There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays and every single one of them is right.
No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: he may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
When a great poet has lived certain things have been done once for all and cannot be achieved again.
Colour which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.
