Greatest Poets Quotes & Sayings

It is certain that the greatest poets, orators, statesmen, and historians, men of the most brilliant and imposing talents, have labored as hard, if not harder, than day laborers; and that the most obvious reason why they have been superior to other men is that they have taken more pains than other men. — Orison Swett Marden

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect, that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, unapproachable bogs, Scythian ice, or a frozen sea, so, in this work of mine, in which I have compared the lives of the greatest men with one another, after passing through those periods which probable reasoning can reach to and real history find a footing in, I might very well say of those that are farther off, beyond this there is nothing but prodigies and fictions, the only inhabitants are the poets and inventors of fables; there is no credit, or certainty any farther. — Plutarch

Even the greatest poets can't express tragedy in a way that is larger than their immediate circumstances. — Andrei Codrescu

The greatest poets are those with memories so great that they extend beyond their strongest experiences to their minutest observations of people and things far outside their own self-centeredness. — Stephen Spender

No words can express how much the world owes to sorrow. Most of the Psalms were born in the wilderness. Most of the Epistles were written in a prison. The greatest thoughts of the greatest thinkers have all passed through fire. The greatest poets have "learned in suffering what they taught in song." In bonds Bunyan lived the allegory that he afterwards wrote, and we may thank Bedford Jail for the Pilgrim's Progress. Take comfort, afflicted Christian! When God is about to make pre-eminent use of a person, He put them in the fire. — George MacDonald

When I mention somebody, that doesn't necessarily mean that I identify with him, personally or poetically. I'm extremely happy when I encounter poets who are different than I am. The ones who have their own distinct poetics provide me with the greatest experiences. — Wislawa Szymborska

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest. — Mary MacLane

A different conception of society , very different from that which now prevails, is in process of formation. Under the name of Anarchy, a new interpretation of the past and present life of society arises, giving at the same time a forecast as regards its future, both conceived in the same spirit as the above-mentioned interpretation in natural sciences. Anarchy, therefore, appears as a constituent part of the new philosophy, and that is why Anarchists come in contact, on so many points, with the greatest thinkers and poets of the present day. — Peter Kropotkin

The arrogance of poets is only a defense; doubt gnaws the greatest among them; they need our testimony to escape despair. — Francois Mauriac

Francis Webb is easily our greatest poet and one of the greatest poets in the world but he's hardly ever mentioned. — Robert Adamson

The greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old. — Christopher Morley

Metamorphosis has always been the greatest symbol of change for poets and artists. Imagine that you could be a caterpillar one moment and a butterfly the next. — Louie Schwartzberg

If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things. — Umberto Eco

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet, but always his encouragement and support ... The sailor and traveller, the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist, phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian and lexicographer are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. — Walt Whitman

I love art, and it plays a huge role in my life. It's definitely one of my greatest joys, and I'm a bit fanatical about certain painters and poets and musicians and sculptors. — Jandy Nelson

TEN GREATEST ENGLISH POETS Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning. TEN GREATEST ENGLISH ESSAYISTS Bacon, Addison, Steele, Macaulay, Lamb, Jeffrey, De Quincey, Carlyle, Thackeray and Matthew Arnold. — Joseph Devlin

Nay, the greatest wits and poets, too, cease to live;
Homer, their prince, sleeps now in the same forgotten sleep as do the others.
[Lat., Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum;
Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus
Sceptra potitus, eadem aliis sopitu quiete est.] — Lucretius

Arthur Rimbaud was a disreputable, mean, ruthless, perverse, hateful wretch. He was also one of the greatest poets who ever lived. — Raymond Sokolov

Those in whom the faculty of reason is predominant, and who most skillfully dispose their thoughts with a view to render them clear and intelligible, are always the best able to persuade others of the truth of what they lay down, though they should speak only in the language of Lower Brittany, and be wholly ignorant of the rules of rhetoric; and those whose minds are stored with the most agreeable fancies, and who can give expression to them with the greatest embellishment and harmony, are still the best poets, though unacquainted with the art of poetry. — Rene Descartes

One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night. — Ambrose Bierce

Sometimes the greatest love is not found in the dramatic scenes that poets and writers immortalize. Often, the greatest manifestations of love are the simple acts of kindness and caring we extend to those we meet along the path of life. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

It will be hard James but you come from sturdy peasant stock men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity You come from a long line of great poets some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said "The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you James and Godspeed. — James Baldwin

Rumi, who is one of the greatest Persian poets, said that the truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and broke into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth. — Mohsen Makhmalbaf

We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks. — Oscar Wilde

Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world. — Miguel De Cervantes

Time is, after all, the greatest of poets; and the sons of Memory stand a better chance of being the heirs of Fame. — James Russell Lowell

Have you ever noticed that all four of the greatest poets in the world are Muslim? And yet all the Muslims you meet are illiterate or covered head to toe in black burkas or looking for buildings to blow up? It's a puzzle, isn't it? If you ever figure these people out, send me an e-mail. — Aravind Adiga

Even the greatest poets, I think, cannot quite get to the places that music can get to in the human - I was gonna say mind, but it's actually the entire body. It somehow seems to infuse the entire body. — Hugh Laurie

I'm into the lyrical side of rap. I listen to some old Eminem songs and think, 'Wow, he's a genius.' He's one of the greatest poets of our time. Even when he's out of control, like on 'Cold Wind Blows,' it's incredible. — Phoebe Tonkin

For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. — Viktor E. Frankl

When it comes to writers and poets, for me it's Vinicius de Moraes. He's one of the greatest lyricists ever. — Ben Harper

And the greatest of the poets, when he defined the poet, did not say that he gave us the universe or the absolute or the infinite; but, in his own larger language, a local habitation and a name. — G.K. Chesterton

The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this development we - men of thought - have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we - artists and poets - who have the greatest influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. — Leo Tolstoy