English Poet Quotes

An English poet writes, I think, just for people who are interested in poetry. An American poet writes, and feels that everyone ought to appreciate this. Then he has a deep sense of grievance ... ~ Stephen Spender

I believe that every English poet should read the English classics, master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them, travel abroad, experience the horrors of sordid passion, and - if he is lucky enough - know the love of an honest woman. ~ Robert Graves

To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth. ~ W. H. Auden

John Milton (December 9, 1608 – November 8, 1674) was an English poet, prose polemicist, and civil servant for the English Commonwealth. Most famed for his epic poem Paradise Lost, Milton is celebrated as well for his eloquent treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica. Long considered the supreme English poet, Milton experienced a dip in popularity after attacks by T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis in the mid 20th century; but with multiple societies and scholarly journals devoted to his study, Milton's reputation remains as strong as ever in the 21st century. Very soon after his death – and continuing to the present day – Milton became the subject of partisan biographies, confirming T.S. Eliot's belief that "of no other poet is it so difficult to consider the poetry simply as poetry, without our theological and political dispositions…making unlawful entry." Milton's radical, republican politics and heretical religious views, coupled with the perceived artificiality of his complicated Latinate verse, alienated Eliot and other readers; yet by dint of the overriding influence of his poetry and personality on subsequent generations - particularly the Romantic movement - the man whom Samuel Johnson disparaged as "an acrimonious and surly republican" must be counted one of the most significant writers and thinkers of all time. Source: Wikipedia ~ John Milton

As inscribed on John Keats' tombstone:
This Grave
contains all that was Mortal,
of a
YOUNG ENGLISH POET,
Who
on his Death Bed,
in the Bitterness of his Heart,
at the Malicious Power of his Enemies
Desired
these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone:
"Here lies One
Whose Name was writ in Water."
Feb 24 1821 ~ John Keats

Every English poet should master the rules of grammar before he attempts to bend or break them. ~ Robert Graves

is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed' was the ninth beatitude." Alexander Pope (1688-1744), English poet ~ Robert Courtade

As English poet W.H. Auden put it in "Apropos of Many Things": "We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the present and let our illusions die. ~ Richard Rohr

am, as an English poet says in an entirely different context, 'as free as the road, as loose as the wind.'" Brunetti ~ Donna Leon

As regards literary culture, it fascinates me that it has been so resilient to the Union. For example, when T.S. Eliot wanted to become poet in these lands, it wasn't as an English poet, it was an Anglian poet he wanted to be. ~ Ian McEwan

The storm of revolution,' as Andre Chenier said, 'blows out the torch of poetry.' It is not for some little time that the real influence of such a wild cataclysm of things is felt: at first the desire for equality seems to have produced personalities of more giant and Titan stature than the world had ever known before. Men heard the lyre of Byron and the legions of Napoleon; it was a period of measureless passions and of measureless despair; ambition, discontent, were the chords of life and art; the age was an age of revolt: a phase through which the human spirit must pass, but one in which it cannot rest. For the aim of culture is not rebellion but peace, the valley perilous where ignorant armies clash by night being no dwelling-place meet for her to whom the gods have assigned the fresh uplands and sunny heights and clear, untroubled air. And soon that desire for perfection, which lay at the base of the Revolution, found in a young English poet its most complete and flawless realisation. ~ Oscar Wilde

Geoffrey Hill may be the strongest and most original English poet of the second half of our fading century, although his work is by no means either easy or very popular. Dense, intricate, exceedingly compact, his poetry has always had great visionary force. ~ John Hollander

What is now proved was once only imagined. ~ William Blake

What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone. ~ Alexander Pope

What has been termed 'correct' English is nothing other than the blatant legitimation of the white middle-class code. ~ Dale Spender

You carry darkness within you, be brave. ~ Elancharan Gunasekaran

I haven't yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things: I expect I will always have to do it that way; regrettably I don't think my first language can be written down at all. ~ Claire-Louise Bennett

I was an English major, so I love discussing possibilities and alternate theories. ~ William Mapother

It's hard for me to speak, whether in English or Afrikaans. The reason I write is because I cannot speak. I feel blunt. ~ Antjie Krog

The poet, the artist, the sleuth - whoever sharpens our perception tends to be antisocial; rarely "well-adjusted", he cannot go along with currents and trends. A strange bond often exists between antisocial types in their power to see environments as they really are. This need to interface, to confront environments with a certain antisocial power is manifest in the famous story "The Emperor's New Clothes". ~ Marshall McLuhan

The tango is a direct expression of something that poets have often tried to state in words: the belief that a fight may be a celebration. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

A cook is creative, marrying ingredients in the way a poet marries words. ~ Roger Verge

By virtue of this science the poet is the Namer, or Language-maker, naming things sometimes after their appearance, sometimes after their essence, and giving to every one its own name and not another's, thereby rejoicing the intellect, which delights in detachment or boundary. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The English language is direct, unapologetic, and wonderfully amoral. Italian has a beautiful sound, but you cannot help but feel that you are always dealing with ghosts from the past and the looming dark presence of the Vatican. ~ Chiara Barzini

How are his poems?"
"He's not as good as he thinks he is, but then most of us feel that way. ~ Charles Bukowski

Use anger to emotionalize whatever thing you intend to do in life - being a painter, a poet or a photographer ~ Gordon Parks

We must insist on assimilation - immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here, they need to come here legally. They need to learn English, adopt our values, roll up their sleeves and get to work. ~ Bobby Jindal

The nice thing about England is that they actually speak English. ~ Isaac Hanson

To define his tendency in a word, I would say that Chekhov was the poet of hopelessness. Stubbornly, sadly, monotonously, during all the years of his literary activity, nearly a quarter of a century long, Chekhov was doing one alone: by one means or another he was killing human hopes. Herein, I hold, lies the essence of his creation. Hitherto it has been little spoken of. The reasons are quite intelligible. In ordinary language what Chekhov was doing is called crime, and is visited by condign punishment. But how can a man of talent be punished? ~ Lev Shestov

I am especially indebted to a 10th grade English teacher who encouraged me to read great works of literature. ~ Samuel Alito

English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results. ~ H. Beam Piper

One of the most essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A man's house is his castle. ~ James Otis

Sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's shit.

These are the things all the great philosophers

just won't tell you flat out about life.

You keep moving, keep living, keep breathing

And you keep writing-creating because that's what you do

And that's who you are. There are no magical voices to guide

You except your own. Make it count.





~ R.M. ENGELHARDT ~ R.M. Engelhardt

The shoes always tell the story,' said the shoe poet.
'Not always,' I countered.
'Yes, always. Your boots, they are expensive, well made. That tells me that you come from a wealthy family. But the style is one made for and older woman. That tell me they probably belong to your mother. A mother sacrificed her boots for her daughter. That tells me you are loved, my dear. And your mother is not here, so that tells me that you are sad, my dear. The shoes tell the story. ~ Ruta Sepetys

But the nation's business must go forward, and this is how: an act to give Wales members of Parliament, and make English the language of the law courts, and to cut from under them the powers of the lords of the Welsh marches. ~ Hilary Mantel

Percy Bysshe (the only poet named for the sound of a match hitting water), ~ Bill Bryson

He that would earn the Poet's sacred name, Must write for future as for present ages. ~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

Do you know who W.H. Auden was, Mr. Iscariot? W.H. Auden was a poet who once said, "God may reduce you on Judgement Day to tears of shame reciting by heart the poems you would have written had your life been good" ... She was my poem, Mr. Iscariot. Her and the kids. But mostly her. You cashed in for silver, Mr. Iscariot. But me? Me ... I threw away gold. That's a fact. That's a natural fact. ~ Stephen Adly Guirgis

Every kingdom has three pillars: Poet, Sword and Law. ~ Lara Biyuts

As for expressing nobody-but-yourself in words, that means working just a little harder than anybody who isn't a poet can possibly imagine. Why? Because nothing is quite as easy as using words like somebody else. We all of us do exactly this nearly all of the time - and whenever we do it, we're not poets. ~ E.E. Cummings

People who could not even spell the word 'vote' or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House, ~ Tom Tancredo

It might seem like the easier way to get rid of a poet would be just to take him out to the backyard, have him kneel between the cans with tomato plants in them and put a bullet in his brain. But they knew from history that it doesn't work to kill a writer. Every time you shoot a poet,a dozen new ones are born. It's like plucking a grey hair. ~ Heather O'Neill

I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. ~ Elmore Leonard

All of our affairs, since the union of crowns, have been managed by the advice of English ministers, and the principal offices of the kingdom filled with such men, as the court of England knew would be subservient to their designs. ~ Andrew Fletcher

Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. Amore or Pyar makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets. ~ Gregory David Roberts

I loved you for a thousand years and missed you in all of them. ~ Christina Strigas

I have made a very rude translation of the Seven against Thebes, and Pindar too I have looked at, and wish he was better worth translating. I believe even the best things are not equal to their fame. Perhaps it would be better to translate fame itself,
or is not that what the poets themselves do? However, I have not done with Pindar yet. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Space and force pervade language. Many cognitive scientists (including me) have concluded from their research on language that a handful of concepts about places, paths, motions, agency, and causation underlie the literal or figurative meanings of tens of thousands of words and constructions, not only in English but in every other language that has been studied. ~ Steven Pinker

And there was never a better time to delve for pleasure in language than the sixteenth century, when novelty blew through English like a spring breeze. Some twelve thousand words, a phenomenal number, entered the language between 1500 and 1650, about half of them still in use today, and old words were employed in ways not tried before. Nouns became verbs and adverbs; adverbs became adjectives. Expressions that could not have grammatically existed before - such as 'breathing one's last' and 'backing a horse', both coined by Shakespeare - were suddenly popping up everywhere. ~ Bill Bryson

I had declared in public my desire to be a writer ... I wanted to develop a curiosity that was oceanic and insatiable as well as a desire to learn and use every word in the English language that didn't sound pretentious or ditzy. ~ Pat Conroy

Homework's hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, 'Okay.' And then I sit down and they say, 'It's math.' 'No! Not math! English, history, anything!' ~ Angelina Jolie