A Quote by William Temple

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

William Temple

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William Temple

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

I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet.

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

It has always seemed to me a great honor to be called an Irish poet. I don't think I will ever lose that, but it's also a great honor to be a woman poet. I put those things together.

Eavan Boland

What was said by the Latin poet of labor--that it conquers all things--is much more true when applied to impudence.

Henry Fielding

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

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?

Lloyd Alexander

The reason a poet is a poet is to write poems, not to advertise himself as a poet.

Yehuda Amichai

No one has ever made himself great by showing how small someone else is.

Erwin Leo Himmel

Acting is all I've ever done, and I've nothing else to make comparisons with when anyone asks me whether I've ever wanted anything else out of life. It's given me enough satisfaction so that I haven't wanted or had to look for anything else.

Robert Preston

I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.

Philip Larkin

I wrote because I had to. I couldn't stop. There wasn't anything else I could do. If no one ever bought anything, anything I ever did, I'd still be writing. It's beyond a compulsion.

Tennessee Williams

Genius in the poet, like the nomad of Arabia, ever a wanderer, still ever makes a home where the well or the palm-tree invites it to pitch the tent. Perpetually passing out of himself and his own positive circumstantial condition of being into other hearts and into other conditions, the poet obtains his knowledge of human life by transporting his own life into the lives of others.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within...By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere. And this, finally was all he ever asked of things: to be nowhere.

Paul Auster

Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else.

Swami Vivekananda

Young people have been educated and raised to believe that that aspect of our history disqualifies America from ever being anything that you can justify, from ever being anything great, from ever being anything with any goodness in it, that the United States is forever blemished.

Rush Limbaugh

A Quote by William Temple

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