Famous quotes containing the words poet laureate, appointed and/or poet:
“If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly.... You are paid for being something less than a man. The state does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The individual woman is required ... a thousand times a day to choose either to accept her appointed role and thereby rescue her good disposition out of the wreckage of her self-respect, or else follow an independent line of behavior and rescue her self-respect out of the wreckage of her good disposition.”
—Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973)
“The poet sings how the blood flows in his veins. He performs his functions, and is so well that he needs such stimulus to sing only as plants put forth leaves and blossoms.... His song is a vital function like breathing, and an integral result like weight.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)