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Poet Biographies : Alphabetical Index


Jonathan Swift

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same posture with creeping

The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.


William Blake
 
It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The most happy marriage I can imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman.


Edward Lear
 
I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle - so all is peace.

William Wordsworth

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.


Apuleius 

I might even engage with you in controversy over the word poverty, urging that no man is poor who rejects the superfluous and has at his command all the necessities of life, which nature has ordained should be exceedingly small. For he who desires least will possess most, inasmuch as he who wants but little will have all he wants. The measure of wealth ought therefore not to be the possession of lands and investments, but the very soul of man. For if avarice make him continually in need of some fresh acquisition and insatiable in his lust for gain, not even mountains of gold will bring him satisfaction, but he will always be begging for more that he may increase what he already possesses. That is the genuine admission of poverty. For every desire for fresh acquisition springs from the consciousness of want, and it matters little how large your possessions are if they are too small for you. Philus had a far smaller household than Laelius, Laelius than Scipio, Scipio than Crassus the Rich, and yet not even Crassus had as much as he wanted; and so, though he surpassed all others in wealth, he was himself surpassed by his own avarice and seemed rich to all save himself. On the other hand, the philosophers of whom I have spoken wanted nothing beyond what was at their disposal, and, thanks to the harmony existing between their desires and their resources, they were deservedly rich and happy. For poverty consists in the need for fresh acquisition, wealth in the satisfaction springing from the absence of needs. For the badge of penury is desire, the badge of wealth contempt.
Apology translated by H.E.Butler


William Shakespeare

Rosalind : Alas the day, what shall I do with my doublet and hose? What did he when thou saw'st him? What said he? How looked he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? and when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word.
As You Like It. Act III Scene II


Antonia Fraser The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England

George I of England (reigned 1714-1727)
...George expressed interest in the new craze for agricultural improvements. How much would it cost, he asked, to close St James' Park to the public and plant it with turnips? His Secretary of State replied laconically, 'Only three crowns, sire.'


George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham

Methinks, I see the wanton houres flee, And as they passe, turne back and laugh at me

Incipient paranoia?


Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

The great essentials for happiness in this life are something to do, something to love and something to hope for.

How about something to eat?


Cornfield by Moonlight with Evening Star: Samuel Palmer (1805-1881)


'Why are you called Esprit?' they asked.
'Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me.'
'Your domicile?'
'Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven.'
'Have you no remorse for your crimes?'
'My soul is a garden full of shade and of fountains, and I have committed no crime.'

The story of Pierre (Esprit) Séguier is told briefly in Robert Louis Stephenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes 

or here www.regard.eu.org/Livres.7/Huguenots/06.html


The Printer to the
Reader

That to have wel written in verse, yea & in small parcelles, deserveth great praise, the workes of divers Latines, Italians, and other , doe prove sufficiently. That our tong is able in that kynde to do as praiseworthely as ye rest, the honorable stile of the noble earle of Surrey, and the weightinesse of the depewitted sir Thomas Wyat the elders verse, with severall graces in sondry good Englishe writers, doe show abundantly. It resteth nowe (gentle reder) that thou thinke it not evill doon, to publish, to the honor of the Englishe tong, and for profit of the studious of Englishe eloquence, those workes which the ungentle horders up of such treasure have heretofore envied thee. And for this point (good reder) thine own profit and pleasure, in these presently, and in moe hereafter, shal answere for my defence. If parhappes some mislike the statelinesse of stile removed from the rude skill of common eares: I aske help of the learned to defend their learned frendes, the authors of this work: And I exhort the unlearned, by reding to learne to be more skilfull, and to purge that swinelike grossenesse, that maketh the swete maierome not to smell to their delight.

Richard Tottel, 1557.

Address to the reader from Songes and Sonnettes.


Adnax Publications : Poet Biographies : 
Alphabetical Index


 



links to poet biographies


Matthew Arnold
William Blake
Emily Bronte
Robert Burns

George Gordon, Lord Byron

Lewis Carroll
Catullus

Geoffrey Chaucer

John Clare

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

John Donne

Thomas Gray
Robert Greene

Thomas Hardy

Horace

John Keats

Edward Lear

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Martial
Christopher Marlowe

Andrew Marvell

John Milton

Ovid

Wilfred Owen

Alexander Pope

Ezra Pound

Walter Raleigh

Christina Rossetti

Sappho

William Shakespeare

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Edmund Spenser

Jonathan Swift

Alfred Lord Tennyson

William Wordsworth