Poets Quotes

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

It's easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time.

I always liked the magic of poetry but now I'm just starting to see behind the curtain of even the best poets, how they've used, tried and tested craft to create the illusion. Wonderful feeling of exhilaration to finally be there.

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order.

I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.

Travellers, like poets, are mostly an angry race: by falling into a daily fit of passion, I proved to the governor and his son, who were profuse in their attentions, that I was in earnest.

Most poets, like most people, try hard to be like someone they admire or they are possessed with an image of what they ought to be.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot.

But the West did not last long enough. Its folk myths and heroes became stage properties of Hollywood before the poets had begun to get to work on them.

Poets, we know, are terribly sensitive people, and in my observation one of the things they are most sensitive about is money.

Let the poets cry themselves to sleep, and all their tearful words will turn back into steam.

Maybe there are three or four really good poets in a generation.

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.

Many poets write books. They'll tell you: Well, I've got my next book, but there are two poems I need to write, one about x, one about y. This is a wonder to me.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Poets write the words you have heard before but in a new sequence.

In its famous paradox, the equation of money and excrement, psychoanalysis becomes the first science to state what common sense and the poets have long known - that the essence of money is in its absolute worthlessness.

Maybe the example of Southern fiction writing has been so powerful that Southern poets have sort of keyed themselves to that.

While I don't satisfy my curiosity about the way I work, I'm terribly curious about the way other poets work. But I would think that's true about many of us.

The poet Melvin B. Tolson once said, 'A civilization is judged only in its decline.' That made sense to me. I would imagine the same is true for poets and tennis players.

I'm not, by nature, a collaborator. My biggest influences were people like painters and poets. These are solitary workers.

Living at that pitch, on that edge, is something which many poets engage in to some extent.

All that a critic, as critic, can give poets is the deadly encouragement that never ceases to remind them of how heavy their inheritance is.

There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

Whilst in Prussia poets only speak of the love of country as one of the dearest of all human affections, here there is no man who does not feel, and describe with rapture, how much he loves his country.