Plato Quotes

If a poet interprets a poem of his own he limits its suggestibility.

Readers bring their own experiences, their own range of - their own wisdom, their own knowledge, their own insights to poem and the meaning of a poem takes place in the negotiation between the poet, the poem and the reader.

I've had people explain to me what one of my poems meant, and I've been surprised that it means that to them. If a person can use a poem of mine to interpret her life or his life, good. I can't control that. Nor would I want to.

Just because a poet said something didn’t mean it was true, only that it sounded good.

To read a poem with no thought in mind but to paraphrase it into a single, simple and usually high-minded prose statement is the destruction of poetry.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

You explain nothing, O poet, but thanks to you all things become explicable.

The works of great poets have never been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.

What a poem means is as much what it means to others as what it means to the author; and indeed, in the course of time a poet may become merely reader in respect to his own works, forgetting his original meaning.

By withholding the knowledge of [the Scriptures] from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds.

Intercession means raising ourselves up to the point of getting the mind of Christ regarding the person for whom we are praying.

My face too blind, my mind too limited, my instincts too narrow. But this intensity, doesn't it mean anything?

I started finding humor in everything. I used to watch a lot of TV, and I finally figured I didn't need to watch TV to find funny stuff. I just watch the commercials. I mean, the commercials just blew my mind.

A poet is a painter in his way, he draws to the life, but in another kind; we draw the nobler part, the soul and the mind; the pictures of the pen shall outlast those of the pencil, and even worlds themselves.

Only through the development of mutual respect, and in a spirit of truth, can friendship come about. By these means it is possible to move human minds, but never by force.

In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people.

So when you see a regulation against lead, because lead is a bad in a regulators mind, what does that mean? You are not telling us what is good, you are just tell us what you don't want, not what you do want.

My life can be so arranged that I can live on whatever I have. If I cannot live as I have lived in the past, I shall live differently, and living differently does not mean living with less attention to the things that make life gracious and pleasant or with less enjoyment of things of the mind.

How can I find the words? Poets have taken them all and left me with nothing to say or do" "Except to teach me for the first time what they meant.

Keep in mind, just because you don’t know the answer doesn’t mean that one does not exist. You simply haven’t discovered it yet.

Poets are the mad midwives to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance.

Painting doesn't have a function, not in the way that music or film does... I mean, you can dance to music. Music can be used for a soundtrack, so it has a function in that sense, beyond itself. But painting doesn't... But I do believe that painting has a purpose.

There are three kinds of minds: first those that attain insight and understanding of things by their own means, then those that recognize what is right when others explain it to them, and finally those that are capable of neither one nor the other.

Theatre artists are essentially sort of charlatans and thieves, I mean that's the tradition that we come from, so I have absolutely no, I make no bones about the fact that I steal from here and I take from there, and we all do it, that's perfectly all right, that's the nothing, there's nothing new in the world, there's nothing actually new in the way that you do something, but the point is is how do you take something and use it to articulate what is essentially a core of any given theatrical production.