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Sayings about Poetry:

In an heroic poem two kinds of thoughts are to be avoided: the first are such as are affected and unnatural; the second, such as are mean and vulgar.: Joseph Addison

Although in poetry it be absolutely necessary that the unities of time, place, and action should be thoroughly understood, there is still something more essential, that elevates and astonishes the fancy.: Joseph Addison

Since the inculcating precept upon precept will prove tiresome, the poet must not encumber his poem with too much business, but sometimes relieve the subject with a moral reflection.: Joseph Addison

Lucan vaulted upon Pegasus with all the heat and intrepidity of youth.: Joseph Addison

Lucan is the only author of consideration among the Latin poets who was not explained for the use of the dauphin; because the whole Pharsalia would have been a satire upon the French form of government.: Joseph Addison

Among the mutilated poets of antiquity there is none whose fragments are so beautiful as those of Sappho.: Joseph Addison

To follow rather the Goths in rhyming than the Greeks in true versifying were even to eat acorns with swine when we may freely eat wheat bread among men.: Roger Ascham

In the old Northern literature, those mythological poems of which the writers are known are properly called songs of the Scalds, while those of unknown authors are termed Eddas.: William Thomas Brande

Poets were ranked in the class of philosophers, and the ancients made use of them as preceptors in music and morality.: William Broome

It is the poetry of portrait, and the portrait of poetry.: Lord Byron

Our poets excel in grandity and gravity, in smoothness and property, in quickness and briefness.: William Camden

I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry: that is, prose—words in their best order; poetry—the best words in the best order.: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language.: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In all comic metres, the gulping of short syllables, and the abbreviation of syllables,…. are not so much a license as a law.: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The art of poetry is to touch the passions, and its duty to lead them on the side of virtue.: William Cowper

Out of the ruined lodge and forgotten mansion, bowers that are trodden under foot, and pleasure-houses that are dust, the poet calls up a palingenesis.: Thomas De Quincey

A poet is a maker, as the word signifies; and he who cannot make, that is, invent, hath his name for nothing.: John Dryden

The moral is the first business of the poet, as being the ground-work of his instruction: this being formed, he contrives such a design or fable as may be most suitable to the moral.: John Dryden

The greatest age for poetry was that of Augustus Cæsar: yet painting was then at its lowest ebb, and perhaps sculpture was also declining.: John Dryden

The female rhymes are in use with the Italians in every line, with the Spaniards promiscuously, and with the French alternately, as appears from the Alarique, the Pucelle, or any of their later poems.: John Dryden

Our numbers should, for the most part, be lyrical. For variety, or rather where the majesty of thought requires it, they may be stretched to the English heroic of five feet, and to the French Alexandrine of six.: John Dryden

Is the grandesophos of Perseus, and the sublimity of Juvenal, to be circumscribed with the meanness of words, and vulgarity of expression?: John Dryden

An epic poem, or the heroic action of some great commander, enterprised for the common good and honour of the Christian cause, and executed happily, may be as well written as it was of old by the heathens.: John Dryden

He is the only proper person of all others for an epic poem, who to his natural endowments of a large invention, a ripe judgment, and a strong memory, has joined the knowledge of the liberal arts.: John Dryden

The shining quality of an epic hero, his magnanimity, his constancy, his patience, his piety, or whatever characteristical virtue his poet gives him, raises our admiration.: John Dryden

Heroic poetry has ever been esteemed the greatest work of human nature. In that rank has Aristotle placed it: and Longinus is so full of the like expressions that he abundantly confirms the other’s testimony.: John Dryden

An heroic poem should be more fitted to the common actions and passions of human life, and more like a glass of nature, figuring a more practicable virtue to us than was done by the ancients.: John Dryden

If this economy must be observed in the minutest parts of an epic poem, what soul, though sent into the world with great advantage of nature, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences, can be sufficient to inform the body of so great a work?: John Dryden

An heroic poem requires, as its last perfection, the accomplishment of some extraordinary undertaking, which requires more of the heroic virtue than the suffering.: John Dryden

Spenser and Fairfax, great masters of our language, saw much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who followed.: John Dryden

The end of poetry is to please; and the name, we think, is strictly applicable to every metrical composition from which we derive pleasure without any laborious exercise of the understanding.: Lord Jeffrey

A poem is not alone any work, or composition of the poets in many or few verses; but even one alone verse sometimes makes a perfect poem.: Ben Jonson

In the Greek poets, as also in Plautus, the œconomy of poems is better observed than in Terence; who thought the sole grace and virtue of their fable the sticking in of sentences, as ours do the forcing in of jests.: Ben Jonson

Claudian, and even the few lines of Merobaudes, stand higher in purity, as in the life of poetry, than all the Christian hexametrists.: Henry H. Milman

A poet soaring in the high regions of his fancy, with his garland and singing robes about him.: John Milton

Rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to set off wretched matter and lame metre.: John Milton

It is uninspired inspiration.: Henry Reed

Those who have once made their court to those mistresses without portions, the Muses, are never likely to set up for fortunes.: Alexander Pope

Pretty conceptions, fine metaphors, glittering expressions, and something of a neat cast of verse, are properly the dress, gems, or loose ornaments of poetry.: Alexander Pope

That man makes a mean figure in the eyes of reason who is measuring syllables and coupling rhymes when he should be mending his own soul and securing his own immortality.: Alexander Pope

Poets are allowed the same liberty in their descriptions and comparisons as painters in their draperies and ornaments.: Matthew Prior

By cutting off the sense at the end of every first line, which must always rhyme to the next following, is produced too frequent an identity in sound, and brings every couplet to the point of an epigram.: Matthew Prior

Has not a poet more virtues and vices within his circle? Cannot he observe their influences in their oppositions and conjunctions, in their altitudes and depressions? He shall sooner find ink than nature exhausted.: Thomas Rymer

A good piece, the painters say, must have good muscling, as well as colouring and drapery.: Earl of Shaftesbury

I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet.: Sir Philip Sidney

In all ages poets have been in special reputation, and methinks not without great cause; for besides their sweet inventions, and most witty lays, they have always used to set forth the praises of the good and virtuous.: Edmund Spenser

The Lacedemonians were more excited to desire of honour with the excellent verses of the poet Tirtæus than with all the exhortations of their captains.: Edmund Spenser

Poetry is meat, drink, clothes, washing and lodging, and I know it.: Jonathan Swift

There is in poesy a decent pride, Which well becomes her when she speaks to prose, Her youngest sister.: Dr. Young

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