“Socrates: The disgrace begins when a man writes not well, but badly.
Phaedrus: Clearly.
Socrates: And what is well and what is badly—need we ask Lysias, or any other poet or orator, who ever wrote or will write either a political or any other work, in metre or out of metre, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?”
258d (tr. Benjamin Jowett)
paraphrased in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig: "And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?"
Phaedrus
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Plato80
Classical Greek philosopher -427–-347 BCRelated quotes
Richard M. Weaver (1910–1963) American scholar
“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” p. 22.
The Ethics of Rhetoric (1953)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher
Letter to William Sotheby (13 July 1802)
Letters
“My objection to metre is that it enables people to write verse with no poetic inspiration.”
T. E. Hulme (1883–1917) English Imagist poet and critic
Lecture on Modern Poetry (1914)
Mary Midgley (1919–2018) British philosopher and ethicist
Introduction, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1979).
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet
“The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes…”
W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer
Source: Cakes and Ale: Or, The Skeleton in the Cupboard (1930), p. 184
Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor
“The Angry Young Man”, p. 111.
The Teachings of Don. B: Satires, Parodies, Fables, Illustrated Stories, and Plays of Donald Barthelme (1992)
“We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.”
John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman
Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman