A Quote by Oliver Goldsmith

Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet. — © Oliver Goldsmith
Could a man live by it, it were not unpleasant employment to be a poet.
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.
Kierkegaard was once asked, 'What is a poet?' He answered that a poet was an unhappy man whose moans and cries of anguish were transformed into ravishing music.
There is this tendency to think that if you could only find the magic way, then you could become a poet. "Tell me how to become a poet. Tell me what to do." . . . What makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and an ability to deal with important unconscious material. When all these things come together, you're a poet. But there isn't one little gimmick that makes you a poet. There isn't any formula for it.
One of the appeals of William Carlos Williams to me is that he was many different kinds of poet. He tried out many different forms in his own way of, more or less, formlessness. He was also a poet who could be - he was a love poet, he was a poet of the natural order and he was also a political poet.
Thousands of men breathe, move, and live; pass off the stage of life and are heard of no more. Why? They did not a particle of good in the world; and none were blest by them, none could point to them as the instrument of their redemption; not a line they wrote, not a word they spoke, could be recalled, and so they perished--their light went out in darkness, and they were not remembered more than the insects of yesterday. Will you thus live and die, O man immortal? Live for something.
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.
I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
In the Great Depression, employment was not low because investment was low. Employment and investment were low because labor market institutions and industrial policies changed in a way that lowered normal employment.
He was a great poet" They lamented. No, he was not a great poet," said Theo, "He was a good poet, he could have been better. That's the real loss don't you see?
Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
I began to write in an enclosed, self-confident literary culture. The poet's life stood in a burnished light in the Ireland of that time. Poets were still poor, had little sponsored work, and could not depend on a sympathetic reaction to their poetry. But the idea of the poet was honored.
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.
We could think or feel as we wished toward the characters, or as the poet, discounting history, invited us to; we were the poet's guest, his world was his own kingdom, reached, as one of the poems told us, through the 'Ring of Words.
Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.
When I was a young man, I understood that poetry was two things - it was difficult to understand, but you could understand that the poet was miserable. So for a while there, I wrote poems that were hard to understand, even by me, but gave off whiffs of misery.
My best songs were written very quickly. Just about as much time as it takes to write it down is about as long as it takes to write it...In writing songs I've learned as much from Cezanne as I have from Woody Guthrie...It's not me, it's the songs. I'm just the postman, I deliver the songs...I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I'll die like a poet.
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