Thomas Bailey Aldrich Quotes

The few bad poems which occasionally are created during abstinence are of no great interest.

The crown of literature is poetry.

Prose is a poor thing, a poor inadequate thing, compared with poetry which says so much more in shorter time.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

Poetry is a pure meritocracy. There's no room for ambiguity: either a poem moves you and opens up new vistas in life, or it doesn't. It's completely objective, and the best always rise to the top.

Look at the history of literature, and you find the history of beauty on the one hand and the IOUs on the other.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

A lot of people feel that the realm of poetry and the realm of the lyric is personal feeling and should rise above politics, which, in fact, good poetry has never done.

I think my poems are slightly underrated by the word 'accessible.'

The usual bad poem in somebody's Collected Works is a learned, mannered, valued habit, a habit a little more careful than, and little emptier than, brushing one's teeth.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

Often with good sentiments we produce bad literature.

Modern poets add a lot of water to their ink.

A hundred cabinet-makers in London can work a table or a chair equally well; but no one poet can write verses with such spirit and elegance as Mr. Pope.

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.

It is not enough that poetry is agreeable, it should also be interesting.

Poetry is not only the most concise way of conveying the human experience; it also offers the highest possible standards for any linguistic operation.

Your poems are of interest to mankind; your liver isn't. Drink till you write well and feel sick. Bless your poems and be damned to you.

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play.

A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm arrives in this world warbling. If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings and flies back into his homeland.

But, that was the beginning, though I didn't start writing until I was in high school and when I was in high school I really began to write poetry with great energy and enthusiasm.