“Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.”

— William Carlos Williams

As quoted in Free Verse. Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 2nd ed (1975)
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William Carlos Williams 83

American poet 1883–1963

Donald Hall (1928–2018) American writer

From his essay 'Goatfoot, Milktongue, Twinbird' in the book of the same title. 1978. ISBN 0-472-40000-2.

“No, nothing short of the creative principle of imagination gives the fine arts their specific quality—the principle that creates for the sake of creating, for the sake of giving free course to that imagination which is not only an essential but the guiding factor in the supersensible being of man, and which not only founds for him the world of religion and of science, as well as that of art, but is the constructive and developing principle of the universe itself.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), The Art-Principle as Represented in Poetry, p.206

“A verse translation should be faithful to the original, less in form than in sense. Or in other words, a poetic translation should be as beautiful as the original in sense, in sound and, if possible, in form.”

Xu Yuanchong (1921) Translator of Chinese poetry

Source: 300 Tang Poems: A New Translation (1987), p. xxii

“In a crystal we have the clear evidence of the existence of a formative life-principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is none the less a living being.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

In 'The Problem of Increasing Human Energy: With Special Reference to the Harnessing of the Sun’s Energy', Century Illustrated Magazine (Jun 1900), 60, No. 2, 180.

“The principles of the theory of probabilities [cannot] serve to guide us in the election of… [scientific] hypotheses.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 375, as cited in: Lev D. Beklemishev (2000) Provability, Computability and Reflection, p. 432

“To a large extent textual evaluation cannot be bound by any fixed rules. It is an art in the full sense of the word, a faculty which can be developed, guided by intuition based on wide experience.”

Emanuel Tov (1941) Israeli biblical scholar and linguist

The Text-Critical Use of the Septuagint, 2nd ed. (1997), p.232

“My paintings do no more than give an idea of my wanderings in search of a guiding principle in art”

Roger Fry (1866–1934) English artist and art critic

Catalogue Preface - Roger Fry ' Retrospective Exhibition, Cooling Galleries, London, February 1931
Art Quotes

“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“By several proofs experience art has made,
Example being guide.”
Per varios usus artem experientia fecit, Exemplo monstrante viam.

Marcus Manilius Astronomica

Book I, line 61. Quoted by Michel de Montaigne in Essays, Vol. III, Ch. 13 (tr. Charles Cotton).
Variant translation: Experience, after many trials, perfected the art, example showing the way.
Astronomica

“The proposition that Muslims are welcome in Britain if, and only if, they stop behaving like Muslims is a doctrine which is incompatible with the principles that guide a free society.”

Roy Hattersley (1932) British Labour Party politician, published author and journalist

The Independent, 21 July 1989

“Being an art form, verse cannot be "free" in the sense of having no limitations or guiding principle.”

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William Carlos Williams 83

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