Poets Quotes

943 Poets quotes by 613 unique authors

Man demands truth and fulfills this demand in moral intercourse with other men; this is the basis of all social life. One anticipates the unpleasant… — Friedrich Nietzsche
[The poets' role is that of] capturing on their instruments the secret stir of life in the air and giving it voice in the music… — Rabindranath Tagore
The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. — Henry David Thoreau
The best poets, after all, exhibit only a tame and civil side of nature. They have not seen the west side of any mountain. — Henry David Thoreau
The people fancy they hate poetry, and they are all poets and mystics. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poets play with words to keep themselves sane — Eyedea
When I first collected these authorities, I was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word;… — Samuel Johnson
Dont teach my boy poetry, an English mother recently wrote the Provost of Harrow. Dont teach my boy poetry; he is going to stand for… — John F. Kennedy
A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. — Oscar Wilde
All literature up to today is sexist. The Muses never sang to the poets about liberated women. It's the same old chanson from the Bible… — Allan Bloom
Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems… — Gore Vidal
Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot. — Edmund Waller
I find my data first in myself, not first in the poets. For if I did not find it in myself, I would not be… — Peter Kreeft
Essayists, like poets, are born and not made, and for one worth remembering, the world is confronted with a hundred not worth reading. Your true… — William Ernest Henley
We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness. — William Wordsworth
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is therefore not at all a desirable quality in a… — Wystan Hugh Auden
All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay and present praise. — Charles Caleb Colton
I have committed many sins in my life. This precise sin-the sin against poets-is without absolution. — E L Doctorow
Popular poets are the parish priests of the Muse, retailing her ancient divinations to a long since converted public. — George Santayana
Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one sense, the creators, and, in another, the creations, of their age. — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent, the nightingale for its song; and the sun for… — Alfred North Whitehead
I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto… — Pat Conroy
Poets, in their way, are practical men; they are interested in results. — Allen Tate
I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry… — Francesca Lia Block
The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems. — Antonio Machado

Who Wrote These Poets Quotes

613 authors contributed a total of 943 Poets Quotes, led by these top contributors: