Poets are far rarer birds than kings.

O! How vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.

Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something.

Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live, and illustrate the times.

Words borrowed of Antiquity do lend a kind of Majesty to style, and are not without their delight sometimes. For they have the authority of years, and out of their intermission do win to themselves a kind of grace-like newness. But the eldest of the present, and newest of the past Language, is the best.

If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being a good poet without first being a good man.

... the best pilots have need of mariners, besides sails, anchor and other tackle.