“None knows the reason why this curse
Was sent on him, this love of making verse.”
Nec satis apparet, cur versus factitet.
Source: Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC), Line 470 (tr. Conington)
“This is truly how I remember the ways of the world. Those words I cursed him with make a verse, and that verse could be sung to music.”
— Vālmīki
In. p. 7.
He remembered these words uttered in a verse form, when he got back to his hermitage. It was then that Brahma appeared before him.
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Vālmīki23
Legendary Indian poet, author of the RamayanaRelated quotes
“None knows the reason why this curse
Was sent on him, this love of making verse.”
John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar
Source: Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Art of Poetry, p. 191
Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American dancer and choreographer
Of her husband, the Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, as quoted in A Century of Sundays : 100 years of Breaking News in the Sunday Papers (2006) by Nadine Dreyer, p. 65.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature
"Averroës' Search" (1949)
“I always make the first verse well, but I have trouble making the others.”
Molière (1622–1673) French playwright and actor
Je fais toujours bien le premier vers: mais j'ai peine à faire les autres.
'Les Précieuses Ridicules (1659), Act I, sc. xi
Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam
Qanitin
Thawabul A’mal, Page 232
Shi'ite Hadith
Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer
Oxford Anthology of American Literature 1938
Prose
Florbela Espanca (1894–1930) Portuguese poet
Sonho que sou a Poetisa eleita,
Aquela que diz tudo e tudo sabe,
Que tem a inspiração pura e perfeita,
Que reúne num verso a imensidade!<p>Sonho que um verso meu tem claridade
Para encher todo o mundo! E que deleita
Mesmo aqueles que morrem de saudade!
Mesmo os de alma profunda e insatisfeita!
Quoted in Trocando olhares (1994), p. 131
Translated by John D. Godinho
Book of Sorrows (1919), "Vaidade"
“There is nothing in the world that cannot be done by verses.”
Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere
Nulla al mondo è che non possano i versi.
Canzone 239, st. 5
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life