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 meeting, in spite of my attempt to decline it, appointed me one of the delegates, so that in getting Baker the nomination, I shall be “fixed” a good deal like a fellow who is made groomsman to the man what has cut him out, and is marrying his own dear “gal.””
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The sensual man conforms thoughts to things; the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The one esteems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)