“All ultimately intermarried to produce a race of many strains, which may account for the paradox that a people famed for stolid, patient, practical common-sense; a nation as Napoleon said, of "shopkeepers", has produced more adventurers, explorers and poets than probably any other in history.” PeopleMaySaidNationsCommonRaceProducePoetAccountsPatientPracticalsCommon SenseParadoxStrainExplorersAdventurerShopkeepers Author:Arthur Bryant
“Harriet Levin [is] a shining poet in her generation.... The dynamics of her language and her vigorous voice distinguish all her poems. Levin's fearless willingness to tackle any subject combines with her subtle intelligence to produce a rare reading experience, the moving, psychologically sophisticated and intriguing work of a poet with both guts and craft” MovingReadingLanguageVoiceGenerationsSubjectsProducePoetShiningCraftsFearlessGutsSubtleWillingnessSophisticatedVigorousIntriguingDynamicsReading Experience Author:Molly Peacock
“All Art is a gift of the Holy Spirit. When this light shines through the mind of a musician, it manifests itself in beautiful harmonies. Again, shining through the mind of a poet, it is seen in fine poetry and poetic prose. When the Light of the Sun of Truth inspires the mind of a painter, he produces marvellous pictures. These gifts are fulfilling their highest purpose, when showing forth the praise of God.” MindArtLightBeautifulSpiritPurposeSunProduceInspirePoetFineHolyHighestMusicianArt IsPraiseHarmonyShiningPainterHoly SpiritProsePoeticFulfillingMarvellousShining Through Author:Abdu'l-Bahá
“The task of the mind is to produce future, as the poet Paul Valery once put it. A mind is fundamentally an anticipator, an expectation-generator. It mines the present for clues, which it refines with the help of the materials it has saved from the past, turning them into anticipations of the future. And then it acts, rationally, on the basis of those hard-won anticipations.” MindHardHelpingPastProduceMinesPoetMaterialsExpectationsTasksBasesSavedAnticipationClueGenerator Author:Daniel Dennett
“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.” WayLittlesArtIdeasWould BeTurnsMoralVirtueProducePoetGeniusHolyMusicianInstrumentsNobleFoolishPainterEthicalAestheticVirtuousEmployedBarren Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
“Shakespeare is dangerous to young poets; they cannot but reproduce him, while they fancy that they produce themselves.” YoungDangerousProducePoetFancy Author:Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“My theory is that poems are written because of a state of emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, like electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem. ... the poem is written to free the poet from an emotional burden.” MayStatesFeelingsTogetherPoetryWrittenProduceEmotionalPoetTheorySpringConsciousForgottenCurrentsBurdenStormCombinationSubconsciousThunderElectricalThoughts And FeelingsIrritationComing Together Book:Mirror of the Heart: Poems of Sara Teasdale Source: Mirror of the Heart: Poems of Sara Teasdale
“other artists - poets, painters, sculptors, musicians - produce something which lives after them and enshrines their memories in positive evidences of their divine mission; but we, - we strut and fret our hour upon the stage, and then the curtain falls and all is darkness and silence.” ArtistFallActorsHoursMemoriesSilenceDarknessStageProduceDivinePoetMusicianEvidenceTheaterMissionsPainterCurtainsSculptors Author:Charlotte Saunders Cushman
“You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive.” UsedArtistQualityPiecesAliveMysteryProducePoetPaintMediumsPotUnsaid Book:The poetry of clay: the art of Toshiko Takaezu Source: The poetry of clay: the art of Toshiko Takaezu
“Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.” MenMayMovingPoetrySocialEffortProducePoetNeededPrisonReformProseNervesPeersMelodramaFaustPrison Reform Author:George Bernard Shaw
“Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.” IfsThinkingWayMeanChildrenPoetryNationsNaturalSimpleProducePoetAmountCivilizationSpeechOrdinaryDirectOneselfStatementsProsePoetry IsPrimitiveUnnaturalSmall ChildChantingExpressing Oneself Author:Northrop Frye
“The poet who writes "free" verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.” WritingResultsCasesProducePoetBedEmptyOriginalsIndependenceCookingDesertDirtyIslandsBottlesVersesSheetsExceptionalImpressiveManlyLaundryFree VerseSqualorRobinson CrusoeEmpty BottlesUnmade Beds Author:W. H. Auden
“I think a young poet, or an old poet, for that matter, should try to produce something that pleases himself personally, not only when he's written it but a couple of weeks later. Then he should see if it pleases anyone else, by sending it to the kind of magazine he likes reading.” IfsThinkingShouldTryingKindMatterYoungReadingWrittenWeekProducePoetCouplePleaseLikesMagazines Author:Philip Larkin
“When we did Cubist paintings, our intention was not to produce Cubist paintings but to express what was within us. No one laid down a course of action for us, and our friends the poets followed our endeavour attentively but they never dictated it to us.” ActionCoursesProducePaintingPoetIntentionEndeavour Author:Pablo Picasso