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It is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable; yet no man, probably, has failed to mourn the fate of mighty poets, whose dawning gave the promise of a glorious day, but who passed from earth while yet the light that shone in them was crescent.

— John Addington Symonds Percy Bysshe Shelley (1878)

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Poetry

More quotes by John Addington Symonds

Gods fade; but God abides and in man’s heart
Speaks with the clear unconquerable cry
Of energies and hopes that can not die.

No seed shall perish which the soul hath sown.

These things shall be! A loftier race
Than e'er the world hath known, shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of science in their eyes.

O heaven-blue eyes, blonde tresses where the breeze
Plays over sunburned cheeks in sea-blown air!

O dark brown eyes! O tangles of dark hair!

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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: John Addington Symonds (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.