The poet is much more the one who inspires, than the one who is inspired.
-Paul Éluard
Quotations
Poet
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
-Jean Cocteau
"Le Rappel á l'ordre"
Heaven deliver us, what's a poet? Something that can't go to bed without making a song about it.
-Dorothy L. Sayers
"Busman's Honeymoon"
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
-W. H. Auden
A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.
-Søren Kierkegaard
"Fear And Trembling; Repetition"
A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child.
-H. L. Mencken
Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.
-Jean Cocteau
No poet can know what his poem is going to be like until he has written it.
-W. H. Auden
"The Dyer's Hand"
Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.
-Alfred De Musset
"Le Poète déchu"
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-T. S. Eliot
"Dante"
