Poet Quotes - Page 36

• A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.

  W. H. Auden

  Mother, Writing, Political

  "Paris Review", Writers at Work, 4th series, (p. 251), 1972.

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• You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.

  W. H. Auden

  Poetry, Humiliated

  Entry for April 11, 1979. "Stephen Spender, Journals 1939-1983". Book by Stephen Spender, 1985.

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• The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Distance, Space, Order

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• genius is original, unique; and in whatever form it may develop itself is the greatest gift that can be given to man, the strongest known link between the material life we have and the spiritual life that we can only guess at. Every great poet, painter, or musician - every inventor or man of science, every fine actor or orator, comes to us as the exponent of something diviner than we know. We cannot understand it, but we feel it, and acknowledge it.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Spiritual, Men, Unique

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• A parent, unlike a poet, is not born - he is made.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Parent, Born, Made

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• Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.

  Arthur Helps

  Art, Business, Character

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• A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.

  Anna Brownell Jameson

  Kings, Artist, Greatness

  Anna Brownell Jameson (1877). “A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected”, p.59

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• In love, a verse of Mimnermus has more power than one of Homer.

  Propertius

  Power, Poetry, Verses

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• The whole history of modern poetry is a continuous commentary on the short text of philosophy: every art should become science, and every science should become art; poetry and philosophy should be united.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

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• There is so much poetry, and yet nothing is more rare than a poetic work. This is what the masses make out of poetical sketches, studies, aphorisms, trends, ruins, and raw material.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Poetry, Raw Materials, Trends

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• In many a poetic work, one gets here and there, instead of representation merely a title indicating that this or that was supposedto be represented here, that the artist has been prevented from doing it and most humbly asks to be kindly excused.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Artist, Poetry, Here And There

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• In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Poetry, Letters, Becoming

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• Without poetry, religion becomes obscure, false, and malignant; without philosophy, licentious in all wantonness, and lascivious to the point of self-castration.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Self

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• Poetry and philosophy are, according to how you take them, different spheres, different forms, or factors of religion. Try to really combine both, and you will have nothing but religion.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Poetry

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• Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

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• There are ancient and modern poems which breathe, in their entirety and in every detail, the divine breath of irony. In such poemsthere lives a real transcendental buffoonery. Their interior is permeated by the mood which surveys everything and rises infinitely above everything limited, even above the poet's own art, virtue, and genius; and their exterior form by the histrionic style of an ordinary good Italian buffo.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Art, Real, Italian

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• They who in folly or mere greed
  Enslaved religion, markets, laws,
  Borrow our language now and bid
  Us to speak up in freedom's cause.

  Cecil Day-Lewis

  Law, Poetry, Greed

  Cecil Day Lewis (1992). “The Complete Poems of C. Day Lewis”, p.335, Stanford University Press

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• A poet is not a public figure. A poet should be read and not seen.

  Cecil Day-Lewis

  Figures, Should, Public Figures

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• ... the attempt to control poetry, to subordinate it to extrapoetic ends, constitutes misuse.... it may be poetry's stubborn quality of rockbottom, intrinsic uselessness whichconstitutes the guarantee of its integrity, and hence of its ultimate value to us.

  Jan Clausen

  Integrity, Poetry, Feminism

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• Every other species of talent carries with it its eternity; we enjoy the work of the poet, the painter, the sculptor, only as thousands will do after us; but the actor - his memory is with his generation, and that passes away.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Memories, Passing Away, Generations

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1857). “The Complete Works of L. E. Landon ...”, p.18

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• Fainthearted animals move about in herds. The lion walks alone in the desert. Let the poet always walk thus.

  Alfred de Vigny

  Moving, Animal, Desert

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• The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and-rarest of the rare-a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either. I am always eager to see what he's going to do next.

  Laura Lippman

  Eye, Writing, Mcdonalds

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• When the exceptional historian comes along, you have a poet.

  Melvin B. Tolson

  Exceptional, Historian

  Melvin B. Tolson (1982). “Caviar and Cabbage”

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• I cannot understand why the poets of our day wax indignant at the vulgarity of their age and complain of having come into the world too early or too late. I believe that every man of intellect can create his own beautiful fable of life.

  Gabriele d'Annunzio

  Beautiful, Believe, Men

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• Rude poets of the tavern hearth,
  squandering your unquoted mirth,
  which keeps the ground, and never soars,
  while jake retorts, and reuben roars;
  tough and screaming, as birch-bark,
  goes like bullet to its mark;
  while the solid curse and jeer
  never balk the waiting ear.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Rude, Waiting, Jake

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1847). “Poems”, p.103

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