Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who…

Man is the poet who kills, Woman the angel who eats.

— Greg Bear

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

— Rosa Campbell Praed

Memory is each man's poet-in-residence.

— Stanley Kunitz

A man is a poet if difficulties inherent in his art provide him with ideas; he is not a poet if they deprive him…

— Paul Valery

“Hey, Babe." The man was a poet. "Hey." I was too.”

— Alice Clayton

“Every man is a poet at heart.”

— Sigmund Freud

For a man to become a poet (witness Petrarch and Dante), he must be in love, or miserable.

— Lord Byron

The perfect man? A poet on a motorcycle.

— Lucinda Williams

One more royal trait properly belongs to the poet. I mean his cheerfulness, without which no man can be a poet,--for beauty is his…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

An exact poetic duplication of a man is for the poet a negation of the earth, an impossibility of being, even though his greatest…

— Salvatore Quasimodo

Let us define 'man' as a poet perpetually conspiring against himself.

— Lawrence Durrell

A man--poet, prophet, or whatever be may be--readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

A poet who is a bad man is a degraded being, baser and more culpable than a bad man who is not a poet.

— Victor Hugo

A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet.

— Eugene Field

Every man is a poet when he is in love.

— Plato