Convincing Quote by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another…

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

— Michel de Montaigne

“The reading of the ancients awakened new delight in the melody and beauty of language: men became intoxicated with words. The practice of rhetoric…

— G. H. (George Herbert) Mair

Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false…

— Samuel Richardson

“The moments of refinement conceal a death-principle: nothing is more fragile than subtlety. The abuse of it leads to the catechisms, an end to…

— Emil Cioran

“And yet it fills me with wonder, that, in almost all countries, the most ancient poets are considered as the best: whether it be…

— Samuel Johnson

“The ancients were subtle, mysterious, profound, responsive. The depth of their knowledge is unfathomable. Because it is unfathomable, All we can do is describe…

— Lao Tzu

In the ancients, one sees the accomplished letter of entire poetry: in the moderns, one has the presentiment of the spirit in becoming.

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at…

— Thomas B. Macaulay

I will venture to assert, that a just translation of any ancient poet in rhyme is impossible. No human ingenuity can be equal to…

— William Cowper

“The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in…

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient…

— Robert Morgan