Breakfast Quote by Archibald MacLeish

Be not so set upon poetry, as to be always poring on the passionate and measured pages. Let not what should be sauce, rather…

— Cotton Mather

A poet must need be before his own age, to be even with posterity

— James Russell Lowell

There is a long-standing tradition in America of scoffing at poets, especially if they show any interest in politics.

— Eugene McCarthy

I don't know if younger poets read a lot of, you know, the poets - the established poets. There was a lot of pretty…

— Robert Adamson

But I'm too old to be written about as a young poet.

— Philip Levine

Young writers should be encouraged to write, and discouraged from thinking they are writers.

— Wallace Stegner

There are poets and there are grownups.

— Jean Cocteau

Poets yearn, of course, to be published, read, and understood, but they do little, if anything, to set themselves above the common herd and…

— Wislawa Szymborska

Do not fear to put novels into the hands of young people as an occasional holiday experiment, but above all, good poetry in all…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

I really don't want to encourage young writers. Keep them down and out and silent is my motto.

— John Updike

If we were in the habit of reading poets their obscurity would not matter; and, once we are out of the habit, their clarity…

— Randall Jarrell

Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.

— Friedrich Nietzsche