Best poet & muse Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance.”

Author:Jonathan Swift

“With no companion but the constant Muse, Who sought me when I needed her ah, when Did I not need her, solitary else?”

Needs Poet Needed Constant Companion Solitary Muse

Author:Richard Henry Stoddard

“Sappho is a great poet because she is a lesbian, which gives her erotic access to the Muse. Sappho and the homosexual-tending Emily Dickinson stand alone above women poets, because poetry's mystical energies are ruled by a hierach requiring the sexual subordination of her petitioners. Women have achieved more as novelists than as poets because the social novel operates outside the ancient marriage of myth and eroticism.”

Giving Energy Social Novel Poet Ancient Myth Access Novelists Muse Mystical Homosexual Erotic Stand Alone Emily Great Poet Subordination

Author:Camille Paglia

“Dulness! whose good old cause I yet defend, With whom my muse began, with who shall end.”

Ends Causes Poet Muse

Book:The Poems of Alexander Pope: The Dunciad (1728) & The Dunciad Variorum (1729)

Source: The Poems of Alexander Pope: The Dunciad (1728) & The Dunciad Variorum (1729)

“To me the Muses truly gave / An envied and a happy lot: / E'en when I lie within the grave, / I cannot, shall not, be forgot.”

Lying Poet Graves Immortality Muse Envied

Author:Sappho

“And when her biographer says of an Italian woman poet, 'during some years her Muse was intermitted,' we do not wonder at the fact when he casually mentions her ten children.”

Years Children Facts Wonder Poet Ten Italian Womens Rights Muse Biographers

Book:Woman's Share in Social Culture

Source: Woman's Share in Social Culture

“He who without the Muse's madness in his soul comes knocking at the door of poesy and thinks that art will make him anything fit to be called a poet, finds that the poetry which he indites in his sober senses is beaten hollow by the poetry of madmen.”

Thinking Art Soul Doors Poet Fit Madness Senses Muse Beaten Sober Hollow Madmen Knocking

Author:Plato

“For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.”

Men Inspirational Long Reason Light Running Able Poetry Poet Holy Garden Madness Inspired Possession Flying Melody Honey Bees Muse Prophecy

Book:The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including The Letters

Source: The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including The Letters

“Rhyme and meter force gaps in meaning so the muse can enter.”

Poetry Force Poet Gaps Muse Rhyme Meter

Author:Mason Cooley

“Let my muse Fail of thy former helps, and only use Her inadulterate strength. What's done by me Hereafter shall smell of the lamp, not thee.”

Done Helping Use Poetry Failing Poet Wine Smell Former Thee Muse Lamps Hereafter

Author:Robert Herrick

“A young poet in America should not be advised at the outset to give up all for the Muse-to seclude himself in the country, to live hand from mouth in Greenwich Village or to escape to the Riviera. I should not advise him even to become a magazine editor or work in a publisher's office. The poet would do better to study a profession, to become a banker or a public official or even to go in for the movies.”

Source: The shores of light: a literary chronicle of the twenties and thirties

“I think there's probably always been visions and voices, and these were variously ascribed to the divine or demonic or the muses. I think many poets still feel they depend on an inner voice, or a voice which tells them what to do.”

Thinking Feels Stills Voice Vision Divine Poet Depends Muse Inner Voice Demonic

Author:Oliver Sacks

“I try to, at least once or twice a week, have someone over and model, usually a dancer friend or a poet or someone to come over and just stay still for me. Depending on how exhibitionist they are, it will determine the finished work. And I say, "You're the muse; you come up with it. I'll draw you however you want."”

Want Trying Stills Week Poet Models Draws Determine Come Up Finished Dancer Muse Finished Work Exhibitionist

Author:Eric Drooker

“When you're a female poet, would you, therefore, invoke a male muse? When nuns get consecrated into their vocations, they become brides of Christ. Christ is the bridegroom. In these symbolic actions, rather than in physical actions, where a male reaches sexuality or participates in intimate exchanges, if one uses a different term - there's often a heterosexual figuring that takes place. The male poet invokes a beautiful female muse. The virginal nun consecrated invokes the male bridegroom, Christ.”

Ifs Different Use Action Beautiful Term Christ Poet Female Males Sexuality Intimate Muse Vocation Symbolic Brides Nun Invoke Bridegroom

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“I have a muse who's very powerful, but I'm still a hopeless deadbeat of a poet.”

Stills Powerful Poet Hopeless Muse Very Powerful

Author:Shirley Geok-lin Lim

“We stalk the truth as poets, sensualists, a duality, limited insanity. We labor in our muse, carving alphabets of experience into our hearts.”

Heart Poet Labor Insanity Muse Duality Stalking Alphabet Carving

Author:Masiela Lusha

“Malcolm X is a person who has inspired - he has been the muse of several generations of black cultural workers, artists, poets, playwrights.”

Persons Has Beens Artist Black Generations Poet Workers Inspired Muse Playwright

Author:Manning Marable

“Many are the noble words in which poets speak concerning the actions of men; but like yourself when speaking about Homer, they do not speak of them by any rules of art: they are simply inspired to utter that to which the Muse impels them, and that only; and when inspired, one of them will make dithyrambs, another hymns of praise, another choral strains, another epic or iambic verses- and he who is good at one is not good any other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power divine.”

Men Kind Doe Art Action Speak Divine Poet Like You Praise Inspired Noble Verses Muse Epic Strain Hymns Like Yourself

Book:Plato: The Complete Works including 31 Books (illustrated)

Source: Plato: The Complete Works including 31 Books (illustrated)

“If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.”

Ifs Men Mind Has Beens Self Failing Subjects Poet Madness Driven Experts Gates Controlled Verses Muse Adequate

Book:A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues

Source: A Plato Reader: Eight Essential Dialogues

“A muse is something that serves a poet well early in his or her career. In later years one writers out of one's own driven inspiration. One learns to find inspiration rather than waiting for it to come for a visit. I can find inspiration almost anywhere.”

Inspiration Waiting Poet Driven Muse

Author:Clarence Major

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