A Quote by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Quote Topics

Best Countries Great Great Poet National Poets Them Universal

Quote Author

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
American - Poet
February 27, 1807 - March 24, 1882

The poets who have written the best poems about war seem to be the poets whose countries have experienced an invasion or vicious dictatorships.

Billy Collins

The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

Henry David Thoreau

In the world of poetry there are would-be poets, workshop poets, promising poets, lovesick poets, university poets, and a few real poets.

James Broughton

Nearly all men and women are poetical, to some extent, but very few can be called poets. There are great poets, small poets, and men and women who make verses. But all are not poets, nor even good versifiers. Poetasters are plentiful, but real poets are rare. Education can not make a poet, though it may polish and develop one.

Orson F. Whitney

We've got teams and other countries have teams. Right now, we are going to their countries; we're finding the best athletes; we're bringing them to our team. We're training them, we're making them awesome, and sending them back to beat us. We've got to stop that.

Tim Griffin

In communist countries, you execute your poets. In the free world, the poets execute themselves.

Kate Braverman

All poets write bad poetry. Bad poets publish them, good poets burn them.

Umberto Eco

People who believe in 'universal health care' show remarkably little interest - usually none - in finding out what that phrase turns out to mean in practice, in those countries where it already exists, such as Britain, Sweden or Canada. For one thing, 'universal health care' in these countries means months of waiting for surgery that Americans get in a matter of weeks or even days.

Thomas Sowell

Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial, but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to mistake it for a universal one.

Hannah Arendt

However fragmented the world, however intense the national rivalries, it is an inexorable fact that we become more interdependent every day. I believe that national sovereignties will shrink in the face of universal interdependence. The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat.

Jacques Yves Cousteau

Nobody is publicly accepted as an expert on poetry unless he displays the sign of poet, mathematician, etc., but universal men want no sign and make hardly any distinction between the crafts of poet and embroiderer. Universal men are not called poets or mathematicians, etc. But they are all these things and judges of them too. No one could guess what they are, and they will talk about whatever was being talked about when they came in. One quality is not more noticeable in them than another, unless it becomes necessary to put it into practice, and then we remember it.

Blaise Pascal

Great Poets discover themselves. Little Poets have to be 'discovered' by somebody else.

Marie Corelli

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?