quotes from classic

Poe's saying that a long poem is a sequence of short ones is perfectly just.

more quotes from John Drinkwater

So it is in poetry. All we ask is that the mood recorded shall impress us as having been of the kind that exhausts the imaginative capacity; if it fails to do this the failure will announce itself either in prose or in insignificant verse.

more quotes from John Drinkwater

It is commonly asserted and accepted that Paradise Lost is among the two or three greatest English poems; it may justly be taken as the type of supreme poetic achievement in our literature.

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To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

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Poetry being the sign of that which all men desire, even though the desire be unconscious, intensity of life or completeness of experience, the universality of its appeal is a matter of course.

more quotes from John Drinkwater

A lyric, it is true, is the expression of personal emotion, but then so is all poetry, and to suppose that there are several kinds of poetry, differing from each other in essence, is to be deceived by wholly artificial divisions which have no real being.

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If it is an imperfect word, no external circumstance can heighten its value as poetry.

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There can be no proof that Blake's lyric is composed of the best words in the best order; only a conviction, accepted by our knowledge and judgment, that it is so.

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Great men are rare, poets are rarer, but the great man who is a poet, transfiguring his greatness, is the rarest of all events.

more quotes from John Drinkwater

To take an analogy: if we say that a democratic government is the best kind of government, we mean that it most completely fulfills the highest function of a government - the realisation of the will of the people.

more quotes from John Drinkwater

The written word is everything.

more quotes from John Drinkwater

The poet's perfect expression is the token of a perfect experience; what he says in the best possible way he has felt in the best possible way, that is, completely.

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When the poet makes his perfect selection of a word, he is endowing the word with life.

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For while the subjects of poetry are few and recurrent, the moods of man are infinitely various and unstable. It is the same in all arts.

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Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.

more quotes from John Dryden

War is the trade of Kings.

more quotes from John Dryden

Love works a different way in different minds, the fool it enlightens and the wise it blinds.

more quotes from John Dryden

Even victors are by victories undone.

more quotes from John Dryden

Pains of love be sweeter far than all other pleasures are.

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Dancing is the poetry of the foot.

more quotes from John Dryden