"Strange as these words may sound I often play with the idea that when all the social theories collapse and wars and revolutions leave humanity in utter gloom, the poet — whom Plato banned from his Republic — may rise up to save us all."

"Thou best-humour'd man with the worst-humour'd muse."

"Give me a theme," the little poet cried, "And I will do my part," "'Tis not a theme you need," the world replied; "You need a heart."

"As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the upper Paleolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth, the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe. I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times."

"Poets should be law-givers; that is, the boldest lyric inspiration should not chide and insult, but should announce and lead the civil code, and the day's work."

"Singing and rejoicing, As aye since time began, The dying earth's last poet Shall be the earth's last man."

"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled, On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled."

"I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing."

"All men are poets at heart."

"Genus irritabile vatum."

"Sure there are poets which did never dream Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream Of Helicon; we therefore may suppose Those made not poets, but the poets those."

"I can no more believe old Homer blind, Than those who say the sun hath never shined; The age wherein he lived was dark, but he Could not want sight who taught the world to see."

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

"The poet must be alike polished by an intercourse with the world as with the studies of taste; one to whom labour is negligence, refinement a science, and art a nature."

"They best can judge a poet's worth, Who oft themselves have known The pangs of a poetic birth By labours of their own."

"I think of poets over the ages sending their voices out into the sky, leaving quiet, indelible trails."

"And spare the poet for his subject's sake."

"Ages elapsed ere Homer's lamp appeared, And ages ere the Mantuan Swan was heard; To carry nature lengths unknown before, To give a Milton birth, asked ages more."

"Happy who in his verse can gently steer From grave to light, from pleasant to severe."

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name."

"Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden."

"Greece, sound thy Homer's, Rome thy Virgil's name, But England's Milton equals both in fame."

"Poets lose half the praise they should have got, Could it be known what they discreetly blot."

"Many questions haven't been answered as yet. Our poets may be wrong; but what can any of us do with his talent but try to develop his vision, so that through frequent failures we may learn better what we have missed in the past."

"Any form of orthodoxy is just not part of a poet's province … A poet must be able to claim … freedom to follow the vision of poetry, the imaginative vision of poetry … And in any case, poetry is religion, religion is poetry. The message of the New Testament is poetry. Christ was a poet, the New Testament is metaphor, the Resurrection is a metaphor; and I feel perfectly within my rights in approaching my whole vocation as priest and preacher as one who is to present poetry; and when I preach poetry I am preaching Christianity, and when one discusses Christianity one is discussing poetry in its imaginative aspects. … My work as a poet has to deal with the presentation of imaginative truth."

"That mighty orb of song, The divine Milton."

"Disjecti membra poetæ."

"It was Homer who inspired the poet."

"Poets are those who love truth and want justice."

"When the poets rhyme in the summertime/You'll hear melodies in the words"

"We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."

"Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd; The next, in majesty; in both, the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third, she join'd the former two."

"A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."

"Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young."

"The first task of any man who would be a poet is to know himself completely; he seeks his soul, inspects it, tests it, learns it... The Poet makes himself into a seer by a long, involved and logical derangement of all the senses... The poet is really a thief of fire."

"He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life."

"And as to the poets, those who go astray follow them."

"For ne'er Was flattery lost on Poet's ear; A simple race! they waste their toil For the vain tribute of a smile."

"A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep."

"While pensive poets painful vigils keep, Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep."

"Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my muse began, with whom shall end."

"σοφὸς ὁ πολλὰ εἰδὼς φυᾷ."

"At any rate, at his [the God of Love] touch every man becomes a poet "though formerly unvisited by the Muse"."

"Poets like painters, thus unskill'd to trace The naked nature and the living grace, With gold and jewels cover every part, And hide with ornaments their want of art."

"Call it not vain: — they do not err, Who say that, when the Poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies."

"half-holy, half-criminal,/or altogether a poet."

"The authentic artist carries within himself another world to which the ordinary person has no access. The great value of the poet is that he enriches us with new, thoroughly experienced feelings, with unseen or differently seen landscapes."

"Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet."

"Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind."

"It is indeed astonishing that all are obsessed with poets and cannot tear themselves away from them. You would think that once they were read, that was that. Transcended, as they say now. Nothing could be farther from the truth."