Alphabet Quote by Herman Melville

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

— Plato

Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.

— Henry David Thoreau

“[We] all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this…

— Theodore Roosevelt

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except…

— Anonymous

“Man understood in the end what man is. He renounces the analysis of God, penetrating the impalpable, in which he has not seen, to…

— José Rizal

Every individual nature has its own beauty. One is struck in every company, at every fireside, with the riches of nature, when he hears…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A great poet ought to a certain degree to rectify men's feelings... to render their feelings more sane, pure and permanent, in short, more…

— William Wordsworth

[The poet] must write as the interpreter of nature and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding over the thoughts and manners…

— Samuel Johnson

“The fact that a good poem will never wholly submit to explanation is not its deficiency but its very life. One lives every day…

— John Ciardi

poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the nature of…

— Vernon Lee

“If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the…

— Plato

True poetry, like the religious prompting itself, springs from the emotional side of a man's complex nature, and is ever in harmony with his…

— Epes Sargent