Command Quote by Lionel Trilling

The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

The poet, like the lover, is a person unable to reconcile what he knows with what he feels. His peculiarity is that he is…

— Babette Deutsch

The poet is a master of language, the schizophrenic is a slave to it.

— Hilde Bruch

The poet craves emotion, and feeds the fire that consumes him, and only under this condition is he baptized with creative power.

— George Edward Woodberry

“[Poetry] was a form of incantation, a means of welding the world inside his head to the one that surrounded him, words the fiery…

— Elizabeth Hand

Poetry's magic lies in the imagery which satifies even without interpretation..it is accepted as easily as it was created.

— Robert Bridges

“A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his…

— Plato

He passes from lyric to epic poetry in order to speak about the world and the torment in the world through man, rationally and…

— Salvatore Quasimodo

Freud ... showed us that poetry is indigenous to the very constitution of the mind ; he saw the mind as being, in the…

— Lionel Trilling

The good poet sticks to his real loves, to see within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or…

— Karl Shapiro

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

— Aristotle

“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