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Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.

— Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve Portraits littéraires (1862)

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Poetry

More quotes by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve

To lend freshness to things known, to spread knowledge of things new; an excellent program for a critic.

Let us beware of irony when making judgements. Of all the dispositions of the mind, irony is the least intelligent.

Despair itself if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease.

Vie de Joseph Delorme (1829)

Since it is necessary to have enemies, let us endeavour to have those who do us honour.

Most often we are judging not others, but rather our own faculties in others.

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There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Nature (1836)

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.

T. S. Eliot Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)

Poetry, unlike oratory, should not aim at clarity...but be dense with meaning, 'something to be chewed and digested'.

George Chapman Ovid's Banquet of Sense (1595)

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

Michael Faraday

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.