“Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley (died: 8 July 1822)

Sara Bareilles - Poetry by Dead Men

Shakespeare Sunday

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” - William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

They are often one and the same.

"Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." - Percy Bysshe Shelley (died: 8 July 1822)

"Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit." - Upton Sinclair (died: 25 November 1968)

"Ah, if I were dictator I'd have poets throwing bombs!" - Gregory Corso (died: 17 January 2001)

"Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance." - Anne Sexton (born: 9 November 1928)