Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
-Plato
Quotations
Poet
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
-Yevgeny Yevtushenko
"The Sole Survivor"
The poet's job is to put into words those feelings we all have that are so deep, so important, and yet so difficult to name, to tell the truth in such a beautiful way, that people cannot live without it.
-Jane Kenyon
I wanted to write the most beautiful poem but that is impossible; the world has written its own.
-Dejan Stojanović
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"
A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.
-Edmond De Goncourt
The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood.
-Jean Cocteau
"Le Rappel á l'ordre"
Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows.
-Edmund Burke
