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Poetry must be simple, sensuous, or impassioned; this man is neither simple, sensuous, nor impassioned; therefore he is not a poet.

— Emma Lazarus The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Compare John Milton: "simple, sensuous and passionate"—Of Education (1644)

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Poetry

More quotes by Emma Lazarus

To his sunny creed
A thousand gloomy, warring sects succeed.

The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)

Nathless the sacred shrine is holy yet,
With its lone floors where reverent feet once trod.
Take off your shoes as by the burning bush,
Before the mystery of death and God.

Admetus and Other Poems (1871)

Then Nature shaped a poet's heart — a lyre
From out whose chords the lightest breeze that blows
Drew trembling music.

The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)

A lady 'twixt two knights' stone effigies,
And every day in dusky glory steeps
Their sculptured slumber of five centuries.

The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)

Down the long hall she glistens like a star,
The foam-born mother of Love, transfixed to stone,
Yet none the less immortal, breathing on.
Time's brutal hand hath maimed but could not mar.

The Poems of Emma Lazarus (1889)

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