Oliver Goldsmith Quotes

Anybody serious about poetry knows how hard it is to achieve anything worthwhile in it.

I never became a writer for the money. I am a poet first. Even getting published is a miracle for poets.

There's not a good poet I know who has not at the beck and call of his memory a vast quantity of poetry that composes his mental library.

My editor, Robin Robertson, is one of this country's finest poets, so I listen to him when he offers advice.

There are things which some people never attempt during their whole lives, but one of these is not poetry. Poetry attacks all human beings sooner or later, and, like the measles, is mild or violent according to the age of the sufferer.

To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well.

Nay, what is worse, perhaps turn poet, which, they say, is an infectious and incurable distemper.

I feel the written word, poetry and literature is just one of the most beautiful things that human beings do. So we have to fight for it.

At the age of 18 all young poets are sure they will be dead at 21 - of old age.

Sometimes you have a poem that you really want to write and it never happens.

Those of us who write spend our entire lives in an endless English class.

Nearly all men and women are poetical, to some extent, but very few can be called poets. There are great poets, small poets, and men and women who make verses. But all are not poets, nor even good versifiers. Poetasters are plentiful, but real poets are rare. Education can not make a poet, though it may polish and develop one.

To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

Like a pianist runs her fingers over the keys, I'll search my mind for what to say. Now, the poem may want you to write it. And then sometimes you see a situation and think, 'I'd like to write about that.' Those are two different ways of being approached by a poem, or approaching a poem.

I've always tried to be a poet more than anything else. I mean, professional musicians die.

I wrote poems. That is my work. I am convinced... I believe that what I wrote will be useful to people not only now but in future generations.

Careers don't interest me. The only thing that interests me is continuing to be a poet on one level or another, whether acting or writing or directing.

I shall, in due time, be a Poet.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I'll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master... it's when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

I always knew that was what I wanted to do - to write, particularly poetry.

For some odd reason, the expression 'death of a poet' always sounds somewhat more concrete than 'life of a poet.'

Most people who write and publish poetry teach or do something else.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.