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Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne The Marble Faun (1860)

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Poetry

More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.

The Scarlet Letter (1850)

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

The House of the Seven Gables (1851)

Let us forget the other names of American statesmen, that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the loftiest — WASHINGTON.

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.

The Scarlet Letter (1850)

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

The Scarlet Letter (1850)

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