“Poetry is the greatest literature, and pleasure in poetry is the greatest of literary pleasures. It is also the least easy to attain and there are some people who never do attain it.”

“Not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.”

Walter Bagehot (1826–1877) British journalist, businessman, and essayist

“Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

“Rural poetry is the pleasure ground of those who live in cities.”

Samuel Palmer (1805–1881) British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker

“Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.”

Democritus Ancient Greek philosopher, pupil of Leucippus, founder of the atomic theory

“Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.”

Shirley Hazzard (1931–2016) Australian-Anglo-American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, non-fiction writer

“The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.”

Edgar Allan Poe book The Philosophy of Composition

“Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

“Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator