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Poet Quotes

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Poet Quotes

“Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters, and musicians.”

Way Littles Art Ideas Would Be Turns Moral Virtue Produce Poet Genius Holy Musician Instruments Noble Foolish Painter Ethical Aesthetic Virtuous Employed Barren

Author:Arthur Schopenhauer

“We are apt to consider Shakespeare only as a poet; but he was certainly one of the greatest moral philosophers that ever lived.”

Moral Poet Philosopher

Author:Mary Wortley Montagu

“The poet has to make a synthesis out of the moral life of our time, and this life is lived at this moment on a political plane.”

Moments Political Life Is Moral Poet This Life Planes Our Time Synthesis Moral Life

Author:Rose Macaulay

“We are pantheists as natural scientists, polytheists as poets, and monotheists as moral beings.”

Natural Moral Poet Scientist Pantheism Monotheism Polytheism

Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“This is not a time to keep the facts from the people-to keep them complacent. To sound the alarm is not to panic but to seek action from an aroused public. For, as the poet Dante once said: 'The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a time of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”

People Said Facts Action Sound Moral Hell Poet Crisis Panic Alarms Reserved Complacent Neutrality Hottest Moral Crisis

Author:John F. Kennedy

“Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.”

Courses Moral Poet Argument Manners Customs

Book:The Hand Of Ethelberta

Source: The Hand Of Ethelberta

“Literary men are being employed to praise a big business man personally, as men used to praise a king. They not only find political reasons for the commercial schemes that they have done for some time past they also find moral defences for the commercial schemers... I do resent the whole age of patronage being revived under such absurd patrons; and all poets becoming court poets, under kings that have taken no oath.”

“I happen to believe that there are a lot of good poets around at present, but a poet like Alex Kuo, who possesses a highly developed moral sense and a bitter honesty, is rare at any time and especially in this time. We need him.”

Needs Believe Happens Moral Honesty Poet Bitter Alex

Author:Carolyn Kizer

“[I]n every part of this eastern world, from Pekin to Damascus, the popular teachers of moral wisdom have immemorially been poets.”

World Poetry Moral Teacher Poet Eastern

Book:Eleven Discourses: Containing His Anniversary Addresses on History, Civil and Natural, the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia

Source: Eleven Discourses: Containing His Anniversary Addresses on History, Civil and Natural, the Antiquities, Arts, Sciences and Literature of Asia

“You can judge the moral bearing of a political system, a political institution, a political man by the degree of danger they attach to the fact of being observed through the eyes of a satiric poet.”

Men Facts Eye Political Moral Danger Poet Judging Degrees Institutions Political Systems Through The Eyes Political Institutions

Author:Roque Dalton

“In America, a metrical poem is likely to conjure up the idea of the sort of poet who wears ties and lunches at the faculty club. In Russia it suggests the moral force of an art practiced against the greatest personal odds, as a discipline, solitary and intense.”

Art Ideas America Force Moral Poet Discipline Clubs Russia Intense Ties Faculty Lunch Solitary Odds

Author:Joseph Brodsky

“One can say that the disaffection is still a lingering naiveté about, not the place of poetry in the world, but - how to say this - the moral and intellectual presence of poets in the world. And while this may seem an old conversation to many poets who roll their eyes and say, "Here we go again about the function of poetry," I think that conversation, about poetry as an engaged art in a world that is full of regression or still lacking in progress, is still really not well-developed. It's almost an avoided conversation.”

Thinking World Wells May Art Stills Seems Eye Moral Progress Poet Conversation Intellectual Function Engaged Lacking Avoided Lingering Regression Here We Go Again

Author:Fady Joudah

“In the interest of the ethical and moral health of the country, the writer, the poet, the artist, the thinker, must hold a mirror up his or her country and say, look, this is who we are, this is how we live, this is our past, we must own it, forgive ourselves, transcend our transgressions, and become better people. Turning the tide must be a continuous effort.”

People Country Past Artist Interest Effort Moral Poet Forgiving Ethical Thinker Our Past

Author:Clarence Major

“Two years ago I was on the train from Berlin to Frankfurt when I heard that the Nobel Peace Prize had been awarded to my close friend, the writer Liu Xiaobo, who is imprisoned in China. To me it was confirmation that universal values and a moral code do exist, and that the point of the Nobel Prize is to encourage writers to stand up for this moral code. Last Thursday I was once again on the train from Berlin to Frankfurt when I heard that the Nobel Prize for Literature had gone to Mo Yan. He is a state poet. I am utterly bewildered. Do these universal values not exist after all?”

Values Literature Moral Poet Train Code Prize Nobel Prize Close Friends Confirmation

Author:Liao Yiwu

“If the poet has pursued a moral objective, he has diminished his poetic force.”

Ifs Literature Force Moral Poet Objectives Poetic Pursued Objectivity

Author:Charles Baudelaire