“The Bible has noble poetry in it… and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies.”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Mark Twain 637
American author and humorist 1835–1910Related quotes

Source: An Essay on Aristocratic Radicalism (1889), pp. 30-31

1 https://en.vogue.me/culture/the-most-inspirational-quotes-from-the-late-sheikh-zayed/, 3 https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/9827319.Sheikh_Zayed_Al_Nahyan

“One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.”
Man hat nur so viel Moral, als man Philosophie und Poesie hat.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #62
Laura Riding and Robert Graves from "Poetry and Politics", reprinted in The Common Asphodel (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1949)

Wordsworth, originally published as "Preface to the Poems of Wordsworth" in Macmillan's Magazine (July 1879)
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888)
Context: If what distinguishes the greatest poets is their powerful and profound application of ideas to life, which surely no good critic will deny, then to prefix to the word ideas here the term moral makes hardly any difference, because human life itself is in so preponderating a degree moral.
It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life — to the question, How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion, they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day, they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers, they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them; in a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayam's words: "Let us make up in the tavern for the time which we have wasted in the mosque." Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them, in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon that great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life.
1770s, Letter to Robert Pleasants (1773)