Philip Sidney Quotes

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

Poets are born, not paid.

Talent is a flame. Genius is a fire.

Could I have chosen my own genius, I should have made myself a great poet.

I soon realized that poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.

A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center.

A noble soul and real poetic talent are almost always inseparable.

I don't think anybody is a poet 24/7, only in those rare moments when a person is producing a poem.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

Poets do not compose their poems with knowledge, but by some inborn talent and by inspiration, like seers and prophets who also say many fine things without any understanding of what they say.

poets are born knowing the language of angels

Genius, that power which constitutes a poet; that quality without which judgment is cold, and knowledge is inert; that energy which collects, combines, amplifies and animates.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.

Many have genius, but, wanting art, are forever dumb. The two must go together to form the great poet, painter, or sculptor.

Genius in general is poetic. Where genius has been active it has been poetically active. The truly moral person is a poet.

All children have creative power.

A great artist is a great man in a great child.

Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power, which if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or Shakespeare.

Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.

What has any poet to trust more than the feel of the thing? Theory concerns him only until he picks up his pen, and it begins to concern him again as soon as he lays it down.

Designing came to me. I didn't have to move.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord in humans everywhere.

Art is not in some far-off place. A work of art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability.