Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Quotes

One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.

Where there are many beauties in a poem I shall not cavil at a few faults proceeding either from negligence or from the imperfection of our nature.

I know some people might think it odd - unworthy even - for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people's poet so I write for the people.

Gregory Corso used to get really pissed when people called Bob Dylan a 'poet.' After writing poetry for a few years, I can understand that.

Alchemy is the art of far and near, and I think poetry is alchemy in that way. It's delightful to distort size, to see something that's tiny as though it were vast.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

I always tell students that writing a poem and publishing it are two quite separate things, and you should write what you have to write, and if you're afraid it's going to upset someone, don't publish it.

Usually a life turned into a poem is misrepresented.

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

Oh! blame not the bard.

If poets were realistic, they wouldn't be poets.

Poets should ignore most criticism and get on with making poetry.

Shakespeare showed me that once I understand the rules, I can break them.

Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.

I always thought that poetry is the verdict that others give to a certain kind of writing. So to call yourself a poet is a kind of dangerous description. It's for others; it's for others to use.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, because my sins were a hindrance to me.

I've had people send messages that said, 'I'm sorry how I treated you in high school.' It was just through kindness. I still think of the world the same way I did growing up. When I got hurt, I decided that this is how people are. But the world is changing, and even those people have changed. And I have. I need to let go, too.

Men will forgive a man anything except bad prose.

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

It is no discredit to Walt Whitman that he wrote Leaves of Grass, only that he did not burn it afterwards.

When one has praised Turgenev, however, for the beauty of his character and the beautiful truth of his art, one remembers that he, too, was human and therefore less than perfect. His chief failing was, perhaps, that of all the great artists, he was the most lacking in exuberance. That is why he began to be scorned in a world which rated exuberance higher than beauty or love or pity.