Man is the poet who kills, Woman the angel who eats.
The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.
'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.
All I ask, is the privilege for my masculine part the poet in me. . . . If I must not, because of my sex, have this freedom. . . I lay down my quill and you shall hear no more of me.
[To] turn poet, they say, is an infectious and incurable distemper.
To have read the greatest works of any great poet, to have beheld or heard the greatest works of any great painter or musician, is a possession added to the best things of life.
I want each poem to be ambiguous enough that its meaning can shift, depending on the reader's own frame of reference, and depending on the reader's mood. That's why negative capability matters; if the poet stops short of fully controlling each poem's meaning, the reader can make the poem his or her own.
You have to be a poet to know how to write a song with lyrics.
A critic must accept what is best in a poet, and thus become his best encourager.
Our hospital was famous and housed many great poets and singers. Did the hospital specialize in poets and singers or was it that poets and singers specialized in madness?
Sculptors, poets, painters, musicians-they're the traditional purveyors of Beauty. But it can as easily be created by a gardener, a farmer, a plumber, a careworker.
God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.
The poets are supposed to liberate the words – not chain them in phrases. Who told the poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make words sing. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anybody? 'Your very own words,' indeed! And who are you?
Best thing to happen for a poet. A fine death, no? An impressive death.
Neither men, nor gods, nor booksellers' shelves permit ordinary poets to exist. [Lat. , Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae. ]
Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.
I believe that Jesus was both priest and poet. Imagine those powerful parables! My experience as a priest tells me it's not possible to reach the hearts of the congregants without a bit of poetry and storytelling.
An anaesthetic is a poet-killer.
Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone.
Poet: gardener of epitaphs.
