“And poets by their sufferings grow;
As if there were no more to do,
To make a poet excellent,
But only want and discontent.”
"Miscellaneous Thoughts" in The Poems of Samuel Butler, Volume 2, Press of C. Whittingham, 1822, p. 269
"Fragments", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
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Samuel Butler (poet) 81
poet and satirist 1612–1680Related quotes

Page 87.
An Apology of Poetry, or The Defence of Poesy (1595)

“The player envies only the player, the poet envies only the poet.”
"On Envy"
The Plain Speaker (1826)

He stated when he deviated from the Valmiki Ramayana epic story and was criticized for the changes made. Quoted in [Mandakranta Bose Director of the Center for India and South Asia Research and the Institute of Asian Research University of British Columbia, The Ramayana Revisited, http://books.google.com/books?id=F_vuoXvAUfQC&pg=PA140, 1 September 2004, Oxford University Press, 978-0-19-803763-7, 140–]

“The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog”
Under the Microscope (1872)
Context: The tadpole poet will never grow into anything bigger than a frog; not though in that stage of development he should puff and blow himself till he bursts with windy adulation at the heels of the laureled ox.

Source: The Victorian Age in Literature (1913), On Algernon Charles Swinburne Ch. III: The Great Victorian Poets (p. 95)