Lytton Strachey Quotes

whether they write poems or don't write poems, poets are best.

There are two kinds of poets: those who feel and those who express themselves. The former are happier.

A poet is not an apostle; he drives out devils only by the power of the devil.

Writers, especially poets, are particularly prone to madness.

What is a Poet? He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them.

Because we all just function, the rest of us, just go to work and come home; artists make life bearable. They give perspectives on things we never knew you could have. They bring joy. They explore inner human emotion, and at its best, the full dynamic range of that emotion.

Poems reach up like spindrift and the edge of driftwood along the beach, wanting! They derive from a slow and powerful root that we can’t see. Stop the words now. Open the window in the center of your chest, and let the spirits fly in and out.

The man is either crazy or he is a poet.

I think great art should play a part in the ordinary man's life, don't you? It can make his existence so much richer and more meaningful.

If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry.

The duty of a lyrical poet is not to express or explain, it is to intensify life.

Now begins to rise in me the familiar rhythm; words that have lain dormant now lift, now toss their crests, and fall and rise, and falls again. I am a poet, yes. Surely I am a great poet.

Art is an experience, not an object.

When I think of anything properly describable as a beautiful idea, it is always in the form of music. I have written and printed probably 10,000,000 words in English but all the same I shall die an inarticulate man, for my best ideas beset me in a language I know only vaguely and speak only as a child.

We wouldn't be artists, writers, painters, musicians, if we weren't sensitive.

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

A good piece of art raises questions.

A woman who writes feels too much.

Poetry = Anger x Imagination

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.

The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life.

I'd like to see cartoonists measuring their work by higher standards than how many papers their strips are in and how much money they make.

No man can be explained by his personal history, least of all a poet.