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I can no more believe old Homer blind,
Than those who say the sun hath never shined;
The age wherein he lived was dark, but he
Could not want sight who taught the world to see.

— John Denham

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Poetry

More quotes by John Denham

Such is our pride, our folly, or our fate,
That few but such as cannot write, translate.

To Sir Richard Fanshaw (1648)

Ambition is like love, impatient
Both of delays and rivals.

The Sophy (1641)

Wisdom's first progress is to take a view
What's decent or indecent, false or true.

Of Prudence (1668)

Books should to one of these four ends conduce,
For wisdom, piety, delight, or use.

Of Prudence (1668)

Whatsoever
Is worthy of their love, is worth their anger.

The Sophy (1641)

All John Denham quotes →

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