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I don't understand poetry. We studied it in high school and college, but they never told us why it was good.

— Tom Lehrer Insider Audio interview (1997)

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Poetry

More quotes by Tom Lehrer

Alas, irreverence has been subsumed by mere grossness, at least in the so-called mass media.

Irreverence is easy — what's hard is wit.

I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up.

That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read.

That Was the Year That Was (1965)

It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.

That Was the Year That Was (1965)

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