A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.

Henry David Thoreau

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Every Every Man Man Otherwise Philosopher Poet Proves Science Superiority Will

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Henry David Thoreau
American - Author
July 12, 1817 - May 6, 1862

The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.

Wallace Stevens

The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.

Jacques Derrida

The poet who speaks out of the deepest instincts of man will be heard. The poet who creates a myth beyond the power of man to realize is gagged at the peril of the group that binds him. He is the true revolutionary: he builds a new world.

Babette Deutsch

If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn't wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.

Donald Hall

The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a good poet without first being a good man.

Ben Jonson

The difference between a poet and a philosopher is that the poet sees logically and describes basically the beauty whereas the philosopher defines the basics and shows the beauty of logics.

Anuj

There is no moral to my song, I praise no right, I blame no wrong; I tell of things that I have seen, I show the man that I have been As simply as a poet can Who knows himself poet and man.

Thomas MacDonagh

A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. That is the one and only difference between the poet and everybody else.

Mark Forsyth

One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

T. S. Eliot

In the eyes of others a man is a poet if he has written one good poem. In his own he is only a poet at the moment when he is making his last revision to a new poem. The moment before, he was still only a potential poet; the moment after, he is a man who has ceased to write poetry, perhaps forever.

W. H. Auden

It's a big thing to call yourself a poet. All I can say is that I have always written poems. I don't think I'm interested in any discussion about whether I'm a good poet, a bad poet or a great poet. But I am sure, I want to write great poems. I think every poet should want that.

Clive James

A poet who is a bad man is a degraded being, baser and more culpable than a bad man who is not a poet.

Victor Hugo

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Science is a capital or fund perpetually reinvested; it accumulates, rolls up, is carried forward by every new man. Every man of science has all the science before him to go upon, to set himself up in business with. What an enormous sum Darwin availed himself of and reinvested! Not so in literature; to every poet, to every artist, it is still the first day of creation, so far as the essentials of his task are concerned. Literature is not so much a fund to be reinvested as it is a crop to be ever new-grown.

John Burroughs

All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.

Stevie Smith

A Quote by Henry David Thoreau

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