Famous quotes containing the words american and/or poet:
“Old age begins in the nursery, and before the young American is put into jacket and trowsers, he says, “I want something which I never saw before” and “I wish I was not I.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires peculiar institutions and edicts for his defense, but the toughest son of earth and of Heaven, and by his greater strength and endurance his fainting companions will recognize the God in him. It is the worshipers of beauty, after all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)