James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
C. Fitzhugh
If the poet have nothing to interpret and reveal, it is better that he remain silent.
It is the poet’s function to keep before the minds of the people not only the underlying truths and beauties of all Nature, but the high and pure ideal of humanity which all should strive to attain.
Learn that nonsense is none the less nonsense because it is in rhyme; and that rhyme without a purpose or a thought that has not been better expressed before is a public nuisance, only to be tolerated because it is good for trade.
Of all great poems Love is the absolute and the essential foundation.
Sorrow has ever produced more melody than mirth.
The experience of suffering has been declared on the highest authority to be necessary to every poet who would touch the hearts of his fellow-creatures.
The heart, unlike the fancy and the imagination, is not complex, and may be reached by the same weapons of thought in the most luxurious court of Christendom as in the tent of the Arab or the wigwam of the Cherokee.
The true poet is even more than a finder or troubadour; he is a seer, a prophet, and an interpreter between the divine and the human.
The wail of grief is more sympathetic than the shout of triumph.
There is something in sorrow more akin to the course of human affairs than joy.
True, sharp, precise thought is preferable to a cloudy fancy; and a hundred acres of solid earth are far more valuable than a million acres of cloud and vapour.