“Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.”
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Charles Baudelaire133
French poet 1821–1867Related quotes
Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature
"Signs in Rotation" (1967) in The Bow and the Lyre : The Poem, The Poetic Revelation, Poetry and History (1973) as translated by Ruth L.C. Simms, p. 249
Charles Bukowski book Factotum
Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 17
Context: I got into bed, opened the bottle, worked the pillow into a hard knot behind my back, took a deep breath, and sat in the dark looking out of the window. It was the first time I had been alone for five days. I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me. I took a drink of wine.
“Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.”
Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film
John Dyer (1699–1757) Welsh cleric, poet and painter
Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 88.
Ariana Reines (1982) American writer
On the practice of poetry in “Ariana Reines Knows That Not All Surrender Is Bad” https://nylon.com/ariana-reines-sand-book-interview in Nylon Magazine (2019 Oct 15)
“This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight.”
Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher
Entry (1952)
Eric Hoffer and the Art of the Notebook (2005)
Context: This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. Our most persistent and spectacular efforts are concerned not with the preservation of what we are but with the building up of an imaginary conception of ourselves in the opinion of others. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter.
“Without madness what is man
more than the healthy beast,
corpse adjourned that procreates?”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher
Poem "D. Sebastião", verses 8-10
Message
Original: Sem a loucura que é o homem
Mais que a besta sadia,
Cadáver adiado que procria?
Source: Poems of Fernando Pessoa