Poetical Quotes
More Poetical Quotes
The poetical tendency of the present and of the preceding century has been divided in a manner singularly curious. One loud and conspicuous faction of bards, giving way to the corrupt influences of a decaying general culture, seems to have abandoned all the properties of versification and reason in its mad scramble after sensational novelty; whilst the other and quieter school constituting a more logical evolution from the poesy of the Georgian period, demands an accuracy of rhyme and metre unknown even to the polished artists of the age of Pope.
h. p. lovecraft— The Allowable Rhyme (1915)
In the case of Smith, the name is so poetical that it must be anarduous and heroic matter for themanto live up to it? The name shouts poetryat you.
— 1905 Heretics, ch.3.
The death?of a beautifulwomanis, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.
— 1846 'The Philosophy of Composition', in Graham's Magazine, Apr.
If ever I should condescend to prose, I'll write poetical commandments, which Shall supersede beyond all doubt all those That went before; in these I shall enrich My text with many things that no one knows, And carry precept to the highest pitch: I'll call the work 'Longinus o'er a Bottle, Or, Every Poet his own Aristotle'.
Rochdale— 1819-24 Don Juan, canto1, stanza 204.
The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.
— 1855 Leaves of Grass, preface.
Sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went ahead.
davy crockett— On being inspired to make an attempt at poetry, Ch. 2
A ghost story of which the scene is laid in the twelfth or thirteenth century may succeed in being romantic or poetical: it will never put the reader into the position of saying to himself: "If I'm not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!"
m. r. james— Preface to More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911); cited from Michael Cox (ed.) Casting the Runes and Other Ghost Stories (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) pp. 337-8.
His poetry may be divided into comic extravaganza on the one hand, and more personal work on the other. There is no one like him in the world in the former genre; as a "light poet" he is preferable to John Betjeman – as fluent in traditional forms, his work is never vitiated by refuge in the poetical or high sentimental, and his choice of words is subtler, funnier and altogether sharper. In his other vein Plomer is fastidious, reticent, elegant and the author of some memorable and moving lines.
william plomer— Martin Seymour-Smith Guide to Modern World Literature (London: Hodder & Stoughton, [1973] 1975) vol. 1, p. 389.
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
william shenstone— "Detached Thoughts : On Writing and Books", p. 129.
The poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age.
Edward Gibbon— Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89), ch. 27.
It is not a new opinion that the Golden Bough was the mistletoe . True, Virgil does not identify but only compares it with the mistletoe. But this may be only a poetical device to cast a mystic glamour over the humble plant.
james frazer— Chapter 68, The Golden Bough
The poetical character... is not itself it has no self it is every thing and nothing It has no character it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it fair or foul, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philospher, delights the camelion poet.
john keats— Letter to Richard Woodhouse (October 27, 1818).
The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.
edgar allan poe— "The Philosophy of Composition" (published 1846).
Although German writers may sometimes have mispraised or overpraised their greatest mediaeval poet, it is certain that we find in Wolfram von Eschenbach qualities, which, in the thousand years between the Fall and the Renaissance of classical literature, can be found to anything like the same extent in only two known writers, the Italian Dante and the Englishman Langland ; while if he is immensely Dante's inferior in poetical quality, he has at least one gift, humour, which Dante had not, and is far Langland's superior in variety and in romantic charm.
wolfram von eschenbach— George Saintsbury The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1897) p. 251
Wherever modern Science has exploded a superstitious fable or even a picturesque error, she has replaced it with a grander and even more poetical truth.
— George Perkins Marsh, "The Study of Nature", The Christian Examiner, 1860, 67, 40.
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
jean cocteau— Jean Cocteau, Le Rappel á l'ordre (1926)
When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room. Truly, I would the gods had made thee poetical.
william shakespeare— William Shakespeare, As You Like It (c.1599-1600), Act III, scene 3, line 15
It may seem like a paradox : while futurism, the singer of modernity , was able to perceive and intuit the power of cinema on theoretical and poetical levels, it did not manage to use the new means of expression as a weapon – nor did it appropriate cinema as the art form of all times.
— P. Virilio, in Gian Piero Brunetta The History of Italian Cinema: A Guide to Italian Film from Its Origins to ..., Princeton University Press, 2009, p.54
The poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age.
— Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89), ch. 27.
Although German writers may sometimes have mispraised or overpraised their greatest mediaeval poet, it is certain that we find in Wolfram von Eschenbach qualities, which, in the thousand years between the Fall and the Renaissance of classical literature, can be found to anything like the same extent in only two known writers, the Italian Dante and the Englishman Langland ; while if he is immensely Dante's inferior in poetical quality, he has at least one gift, humour, which Dante had not, and is far Langland's superior in variety and in romantic charm.
— George Saintsbury The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1897) p. 251
I would the gods had made thee poetical.
— Touchstone, Sc. iii (Act III)
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion, Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle With words and meanings.
— 1940 Four Quartets,'East Coker', pt.1.
