Epic poems Quote by Anonymous

The poet may say or sing, not as things were, but as they ought to have been; but the historian must pen them, not…

— Miguel de Cervantes

I think poets tell better history than historians. Historians lie all the time but the poets can get to truth of it.

— John Cusack

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

— Barbara Tuchman

“The historian is an indissoluble part of his history, as the poet is of his poem, as the shadowy biographer is of his subject's…

— A.S. Byatt

The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in…

— Philibert Joseph Roux

The historian should be fearless and incorruptible; a man of independence, loving frankness and truth; one who, as the poets says, calls a fig…

— Lucian

“History deals with situations and figures not imaginary but real. It demands therefore a combination of qualities unnecessary to the poet or writer of…

— Norman Douglas

Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.

— F. Sionil Jose

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

— Melvin B. Tolson

To write history is as important as to make history. It is an unchanging truth that if the writer does not remain true to…

— Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Why should a novelist not also be a historian? To force unnatural divisions within the English language is to work against its capacious and…

— Peter Ackroyd

The historian ought to be the humblest of men; he is faced a dozen times a day with the evidence of his own ignorance;…

— C. V. Wedgwood