“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”

— Gerard Manley Hopkins

Letter to Richard Watson Dixon (17 October 1881)
Letters, etc

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81

English poet 1844–1889

Helen Steiner Rice (1900–1981) American poet

“Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Haunted by Halloween", in the New York Times (31 October 1990).
Context: Our forebears are deserving of tribute for one indisputable reason, if for no other: without them we should not be here. Let us recognize that we are not the ultimate triumph but rather we are beads on a string. Let us behave with decency to the beads that were strung before us and hope modestly that the beads that come after us will not hold us of no account simply because we are dead.

“At bottom, it is the Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough. He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that, perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all; and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents, — perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all, See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other, and name yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation, all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to ask, when they brought him a new pupil, 'But are ye sure he's not a dunce?”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Why, really one might ask the same thing, in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function; and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure he's.
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

“Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.”

Joseph Hall (1574–1656) British bishop

Christian Moderation, introduction.

“Friendship is a precious gift that can't be bought or sold. It's value is greater than mountains made of gold. If you shall ask God for a gift be thankful if he sends not diamonds pearls or riches but the love and trust of friends. It is the friends you can call up at 4 a. m. that matter.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

“I think one has to regard it as a long term process. One has to remember that String theory, if you choose to date it from the Veneziano model, is already eighteen years old”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

"Edward Witten" interview, Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (1992) ed. P.C.W. Davies, Julian Brown
Context: I think one has to regard it as a long term process. One has to remember that String theory, if you choose to date it from the Veneziano model, is already eighteen years old... that quantum electrodynamic theory towards which Planck was heading [in 1900], took fifty years to emerge.

“World-Poets too, those whom we are to take for perfect Poets, are settled by critics in the same way. One who rises so far above the general level of Poets will, to such and such critics, seem a Universal Poet; as he ought to do. And yet it is, and must be, an arbitrary distinction. All Poets, all men, have some touches of the Universal; no man is wholly made of that.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet

“Twenty-one years old! I never doubted my vital force. But how is it to fare with my chosen art? The recognition that at bottom I am a poet, after all, should be no hindrance in the plastic arts! And should I really have to be a poet, Lord knows what else I should desire. Certainly, a sea swells within me, for I feel. It is a hopeless state, to feel in such a way that the storm rages on all sides at once and that nowhere is a lord who commands the chaos.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote (1900), # 121, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902

“Every good poet includes a critic; the reverse will not hold.”

William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener

On Writing and Books

“Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

On Regine Olsen (2 February 1839)
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s
Context: Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. … it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.

“I hold with the old-fashioned criticism that Browning is not really a poet, that he has all the gifts but the one needful and the pearls without the string; rather one should say raw nuggets and rough diamonds.”

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Gerard Manley Hopkins 81

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