Poetry Quotes — page 8

And, on the label of the stuff, He wrote this verse; Which one would think was clear enough, And terse:— When taken, To be well shaken.

Be sure from nature never to depart; To copy nature is the task of art. The noblest poets own her sovereign sway, And ever follow where she leads the way.

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

As fire is kindled by fire, so is a poet's mind kindled by contact with a brother poet.

In yonder Grave a Druid lies Where slowly winds the Stealing Wave! The Year's best Sweets shall duteous rise To deck its Poet's sylvan Grave!

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

When the generation that has known war is still alive, it is well that they should be given chapter and verse with regard to some of the best-known cries, catchwords, and exhortations by which they were so greatly influenced. As a warning, …

This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others in the attempt made to include in it all the best original lyrical pieces and songs in our language, by writers not living, and none besides the best. The Editor will regard as …

poetry is of so subtile a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum, there being certain graces …

Regarding the treatment. of wives, the following verse in the Qur'an (Surah iv. 38) allows the husband absolute power to correct them: "Chide those whose refractoriness you have cause to fear. Remove them into sleeping chambers apart, and …

I believe the best poetry of our times is growing too artistic; the study is too visible. If freedom and naturalness are lost out of poetry, everything worth having is lost.

I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.

Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.

It is generally thought very ridiculous to pretend to write an Heroic Poem, or a fine Discourse upon any Subject, without understanding the Propriety of the Language wrote in; and to me it seems no less ridiculous for one to pretend to …

The wrath of the son of Peleus,—O goddess of song, unfold! The deadly wrath of Achilles: To Greece the source of many woes! Which peopled the regions of death,—with shades of heroes untimely slain: While pale they lay along the shore: Torn …

One day I was walking through London with Tom Campbell the poet, when we met a negro, who took off his hat and begged to thank me for my efforts against slavery. Campbell's poetic fancy was smitten, and he exclaimed with great fervour: …

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.

As old Chaucer was wont to say, that broad famous English poet.

Poetry is like claret, one enjoys it only when it is very new, or when it is very old.

Lord Byron, who was writing the third canto of Childe Harold, was the only one among us who put his thoughts upon paper. These, as he brought them successively to us, clothed in all the light and harmony of poetry, seemed to stamp as …

Nearly everybody in San Francisco writes poetry. Few San Franciscans would admit this, but most of them would rather like to have their productions accidentally discovered.

I am not as these are, the poet saith In youth's pride, and the painter, among men At bay, where never pencil comes nor pem

Above all, the poet, whose judgment should be clear, whose feelings should be uniform and sound, whose sense should be alive to every impression and hardened to none, who is the legislator of generations and the moral instructor of the …

An architect, to be a true exponent of his time, must possess first, last and always the sympathy, the intuition of a poet … this is the one real, vital principle that survives through all places and all times.