All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Date of birth: 1854-10-16
Date of death: 1900-11-30
Quotes number: 203
Nationality: Irish
Profession: Dramatist
By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.
Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.
It is more difficult to keep the attention of hearers than of readers.
Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.
That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.
Always be a poet, even in prose.
Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.
God is the perfect poet.
A man of eighty has outlived probably three new schools of painting, two of architecture and poetry and a hundred in dress.
There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.