A Quote by Plato

For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.

Plato

Quote Topics

Able Become Bees Beside Bring Chant Compose Flying Gardens Him Himself His Holy Honey Inspired Light Like Long Longer Make Man Melodies Muses Never Out Poet Poetry Poets Possession Prophecy Reason Run Say Tell Them They Say Thing True Until Us

Quote Author

Plato
Greek - Philosopher
427 BC - 347 BC

for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him.

Plato

For a poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind and his intellect is no longer in him.

Plato

Like bees around honey. Why are bees so attracted to honey, since they make it? It can only be vanity.

Simon Munnery

For the poet is a light winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses and the mind is no longer with him. When he has not attained this state he is powerless and unable to utter his oracles.

Plato

Take from my palms, to soothe your heart, a little honey, a little sun, in obedience to Persephone's bees. You can't untie a boat that was never moored, nor hear a shadow in its furs, nor move through thick life without fear. For us, all that's left is kisses tattered as the little bees that die when they leave the hive. Deep in the transparent night they're still humming, at home in the dark wood on the mountain, in the mint and lungwort and the past. But lay to your heart my rough gift, this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees that once made a sun out of honey.

Osip Mandelstam

One thing I've learned - and I've said this to Republicans and Democrats - is, bees cannot sting and make honey at the same time. They have to make a choice. Either they are going to be a stinger or a honey-maker, and I contend that honey is a symbol of legislation and, the nuclear language used by members is the stinger, and you can't do both.

Emanuel Cleaver

We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.

Muriel Barbery

Long ago Apollo called to Aristæus, youngest of the shepherds, Saying, "I will make you keeper of my bees." Golden were the hives, and golden was the honey; golden, too, the music, Where the honey-makers hummed among the trees.

Henry Van Dyke

The bees pillage the flowers here and there but they make honey of them which is all their own; it is no longer thyme or marjolaine: so the pieces borrowed from others he will transform and mix up into a work all his own.

Michel de Montaigne

O bees, sweet bees!" I said; "that nearest field Is shining white with fragrant immortelles Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells.

Helen Hunt Jackson

If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the Muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired madman.

Socrates

Bees work for man, and yet they never bruise Their Master's flower, but leave it having done, As fair as ever and as fit to use; So both the flower doth stay and honey run.

George Herbert

Of course, a psychologist would find it more direct to study the inspired poet. He would make concrete studies of inspiration in individual geniuses. But for all that, would he experience the phenomena of inspiration? His human documentation gathered from inspired poets could hardly be related, except from the exterior, in an ideal of objective observations. Comparison of inspired poets would soon make us lose sight of inspiration.