Poet Quotes - Page 13

• We are born poets. we become orators.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Born, Orators

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• What a conception of art must those theorists have who exclude portraits from the proper province of the fine arts! It is exactly as if we denied that to be poetry in which the poet celebrates the woman he really loves. Portraiture is the basis and the touchstone of historic painting.

  August Wilhelm von Schlegel

  Art, Portraits, Portraiture

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• It was not the purpose of poetry to record anything and everything, to merely describe either the outer world or some subjective mood, but to speak from the imagination of the poet to the imagination of the reader.

  Kathleen Raine

  Imagination, Purpose, Records

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• I am not just a lesbian. I am not just a poet. I am not just a mother. Honor the complexity of your vision and yourselves.

  Audre Lorde

  Mother, Honor, Vision

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• If you know much about your work - why you work, how you work, your aims - you are probably not a poet.

  Mary Webb

  Aim, Knows, Ifs

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• God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.

  Honore de Balzac

  Life, Drama, Men

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• There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier.

  Honore de Balzac

  Two, Kind, Former

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• Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  May, Modern, Trash

  Charles Caleb Colton (1821). “Lacon: or, Many things in few words”, p.214

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• Constancy will always be the genius of love, the indication of that strength which constitutes the poet. A man should possess all women in his wife, like those squalid poetasters of the seventeenth century who made fair Irises and dazzling Chloes of their lowly Manons.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Wife, Irises

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• Are not poets men who fulfill their hopes prematurely?

  Honore de Balzac

  Men

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• How far we are going to read a poet when we can read about a poet is a problem to lay before biographers.

  Virginia Woolf

  Problem, Lays, Biographers

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.4047, Delphi Classics

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• Poets and men of action differ: the former yield to their feelings in order to reproduce them in lively colors, and therefore judge only ex post facto; the latter feel and judge at one and the same time.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Yield, Order

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• if you think it so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets.

  Pauline Kael

  Thinking, Trying, May

  Pauline Kael (1994). “For keeps”, E P Dutton

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• Truth is far and flat, and fancy is fiery; and truth is cold, and people feel the cold, and they may wrap themselves against it in fancies that are fiery, but they should not call them facts; and, generally, poets do not; they are shrewd, they feel the cold, too, but they know a hawk from a handsaw, a fact from a fancy, as none knows better.

  Stevie Smith

  People, May, Fancy

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• Poets, when they write of love, give themselves and everyone else away!

  Phyllis Bottome

  Writing, Giving

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• The poets have familiarized more people with history than have the historians.

  Barbara Tuchman

  People, History, Poetry

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• Tis a question whether adversity or prosperity makes the most poets.

  George Farquhar

  Adversity, Prosperity

  George Farquhar (1736). “The twin-rivals: A comedy. : As it is acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane: by her Majesty's servants”, p.81

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• You must continue. Poets are the ones who change the world.

  Jackie Kennedy

  World, Changing The World

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• To write about the monstrous sense of alienation the poet feels in this culture of polarized hatreds is a way of staying sane. With the poem, I reach out to an audience equally at odds with official policy, and I celebrate our mutual humanness in an inhuman world.

  Maxine Kumin

  Writing, Odds, Hatred

  Maxine Kumin (2000). “Always Beginning: Essays on a Life in Poetry”

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• Poetry and preaching do not go well together; when the preacher mounts the pulpit the poet usually goes away.

  Edith Hamilton

  Poetry, Together, Pulpit

  Edith Hamilton (1957). “The Roman Way to Western Civilization”

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• I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that the world knows nothing of its greatest men; but there are forms of greatness, or at least of excellence, which "die and make no sign"; there are martyrs that miss the palm, but not the stake; heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  Hero, Greatness, Men

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• Poems reveal secrets when they are analyzed. The poet's pleasure in finding ingenious ways to enclose her secrets should be matched by the reader's pleasure in unlocking and revealing these secrets.

  Diane Wakoski

  Secret, Unlocking, Way

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• The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.

  Wendy Cope

  Wife, Poetry, Reason

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• A poet or novelist will invent interruptions to avoid long consecutive days at the ordained page; and of these the most pernicious are other kinds of writing -- articles, lectures, reviews, a wide correspondence.

  Shirley Hazzard

  Writing, Long, Novelists

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• For me, a poet is someone who is 'in contact.' Someone through whom a current is passing.

  Marguerite Yourcenar

  Passing, Currents, Contact

  Marguerite Yourcenar, Matthieu Galey (1984). “With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey”, Boston : Beacon Press

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