“Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be.”

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

Letter to Coventry Patmore, published in The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges (1955), edited by C. C. Abbott, p. 263
Letters, etc

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a …" by Gerard Manley Hopkins?

Gerard Manley Hopkins81

English poet 1844–1889

Related quotes

“The most important of the beat poets. He was a really true poet with an original voice, probably the most lyrical of those poets.”

Nancy Peters (1936) American writer and publisher

Carol Ness, "Beat Poet Gregory Corso, 70, Dies of Cancer" http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/01/18/MN143830.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle, 2001-01-18. : On Gregory Corso. <br class="br">2000s

“The exquisite and finely wrought susceptibility invariable marks the temperament of the poet. The cast of originality is the stamp and testimony of genius.”

Henry Kirke White (1785–1806) English poet

Melancholy Hours

“A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

22 September 1830.
Table Talk (1821–1834)
Context: A poet ought not to pick nature's pocket: let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection; and trust more to your imagination than to your memory.

“Every great architect is — necessarily — a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

The Future of Architecture (1953)

“It has been observed before that images, however beautiful, though faithfully copied from nature, and as accurately represented in words, do not of themselves characterize the poet. They become proofs of original genius only as far as they are modified by a predominant passion; or by associated thoughts or images awakened by that passion; or when they have the effect of reducing multitude to unity, or succession to an instant; or lastly, when a human and intellectual life is transferred to them from the poet's spirit.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV

“Not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of Nature, but the origin and formation of the Philosophy of Nature presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics. However, the course of a science's origin and the preliminaries of its construction are one thing, while the science itself is another. In the latter, the former can no longer appear as the foundation of the science; here, the foundation must be the necessity of the Concept.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences

Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1816)

“Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet’s job. The rest is literature.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Mettez un lieu commun en place, nettoyez-le, frottez-le, éclairez-le de telle sorte qu'il frappe avec sa jeunesse et avec la même fraîcheur, le même jet qu'il avait à sa source, vous ferez œuvre de poète. Tout le reste est littérature.
"Le Secret Professionnel" (originally published 1922); later published in Collected Works Vol. 9 (1950)
A Call to Order (1926)

“A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

A Call to Order (1926)

“Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873)
Source: https://archive.org/details/autobiography01mill/page/149/mode/1up p. 149

“As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected.”

Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species (1859)

From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. <br class="br">"Introduction", page 5 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=20&itemID=F373&viewtype=image <br class="br">On the Origin of Species (1859)

“Every true poet, I thought, must be original and originality a condition of poetic genius; so that each poet is like a species in nature (not an individuum genericum or specificum) and can never recur. That nothing shd. be old or borrowed however cannot be.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Gerard Manley Hopkins81

Related quotes

Related topics