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A bad man is the sort who weeps every time he speaks of a good woman.

Bad, quirky poetry might be better than some of the good stuff, because it really comes from the heart.

No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

The bad poet is a toady mimicking nature.

No poetry that I'm aware of, however bad or glorious, has ever left somebody a worse person than they were before they read it.

Many poets, as you know, are not good readers.

The good poet sticks to his real loves, those within the realm of possibility. He never tries to hold hands with God or the human race.

Good poets have written in order to describe something or to preach something - with their eye on the object or the end. The essence of the poetry does not lie in the thing described or in the message imparted but in the resulting concrete unity, the poem.

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.