Quotes
Quotes about Wit
When Shakespeare is charges with debts to his authors, Landor replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life." - Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Why, simpleton, do you mix your verses with mine? What have you to do, foolish man, with writings that convict you of theft? Why do you attempt to associate foxes with lions, and make owls pass for eagles? Though you had one of Ladas's legs, you would not be able, blockhead, to run with the other leg of wood.
With him most authors steal their works, or buy; Garth did not write his own Dispensary.
In baiting a mousetrap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse.
Come, I will fasten on this sleeve of thine: Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, Whose weakness married to thy stronger state Makes with me thy strength to communicate. If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss; Who all for want of pruning, with intrusion Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion.
It is in the character if very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
The truest mark of being born with great qualities, is being born without envy.
It is happy for you that possess the talent of pleasing with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?
Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its own ways.
Pleasure blinds (so to speak) the eyes of the mind, and has no fellowship with virtue. [Lat., Voluptas mentis (ut ita dicam) praestringit oculos, nec habet ullum cum virtute commercium.]
I walked a mile with Pleasure, She chattered all the way; But left me none the wiser, For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne'er a word said she; But, oh, the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me!
Men may scoff, and men may pray, But they pay Every pleasure with a pain.
For rhyme the rudder is of verses, With which, like ships, they steer their courses.
Some force whole regions, in despite O' geography, to change their site; Make former times shake hands with latter, And that which was before come after; But those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for the other's sake; For one for sense, and one for rhyme, I think's sufficient at one time.
Doeg, though without knowing how or why, Made a still a blundering kind of melody; Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin, Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in; Free from all meaning whether good or bad, And in one word, heroically mad.
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
The job of the poet is to render the world--to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.
Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.
CONSIDERING THE VOID When I behold the charm of evening skies, their lulling endurance; the patterns of stars with names of bears and dogs, a swan, a virgin; other planets that the Voyager showed were like and so unlike our own, with all their diverse moons, bright discs, weird rings, and cratered faces; comets with their streaming tails bent by pressure from our sun; the skyscape of our Milky Way holding in its shimmering disc an infinity of suns (or say a thousand billion); knowing there are holes of darkness gulping mass and even light, knowing that this galaxy of ours is one of multitudes in what we call the heavens, it troubles me. It troubles me. -President Jimmy Carter- (he has written a volume of poetry as well as a novel, The Hornet's Nest, about the Revolutionary War).
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
