“Poets are being pursued by the philosophers today, out of the poverty of philosophy. God damn it, you might think a man had no business to be writing, to be a poet unless some philosophic stinker gave him permission.”
Letter to James Laughlin (14 January 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219
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William Carlos Williams83
American poet 1883–1963Related quotes
“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV
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William Barrett (philosopher) book Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy
Source: Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958), Chapter Five, Christian sources, p. 105
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Fragment 16 "What is the best provision for old age," in Moral Exhortation (1986), p. 32
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“Philosophers are moral, and poets are picturesque about the country.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist
The Monthly Magazine
“Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools
Byron
Essays in Criticism, second series (1888)
