“Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.”
Lines 372–373 http://books.google.com/books?id=hlgNAAAAYAAJ&q=%22mediocribus+esse+poetis+Non+homines+non+di+non+concessere+columnae%22&pg=PA769#v=onepage
Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC)
Original
Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non di, non concessere columnae.
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Horace 92
Roman lyric poet -65–-8 BCRelated quotes
Variant: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity trust upon them.
Source: Catch-22 (1961)
Context: Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major Major it had been all three.
“God is the poet, men are only the actors.”
Dieu est le poète et les hommes ne sont que les acteurs.
Socrate Chrétien, Discours VIII.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 42.
Socrate Chrétien (1662)
“Two great poets are stronger than two thousand mediocrities”
31
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)
“Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible.”
Quote magazine (15 June 1958)
1950s
Context: When human beings have been fascinated by the contemplation of their own hearts, the more intricate biological pattern of the female has become a model for the artist, the mystic, and the saint. When mankind turns instead to what can be done, altered, built, invented, in the outer world, all natural properties of men, animals, or metals become handicaps to be altered rather than clues to be followed. Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to be as mediocre as possible.
Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) p. 366.
“Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before”
Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: But it seems that something has happened that has never happened before: though we know not just when, or why, or how, or where.
Men have left GOD not for other gods, they say, but for no God; and this has never happened before
That men both deny gods and worship gods, professing first Reason,
And then Money, and Power, and what they call Life, or Race, or Dialectic.
Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community
Page 87.
An Apology of Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy (1595)
“No poet in England has ever been in the masses what Tulsidas has been to the people of this land.”
Edwin Greaves, in "A Garden of Deeds: Ramacharitmanas, a Message of Human Ethics", p. 35
On Tulsidas’s epic Ramacharritamanas