literature Quotes

When writing the plot and choosing the right words, the poet should imagine the scene as clearly as possible. By seeing everything vividly, as if watching it happen, they will find what fits and are less likely to miss inconsistencies.

A tragedy is that moment where the hero comes face to face with his true identity.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

A tragedy is a play about an action that is complete and has a certain importance. Something complete has a beginning, middle, and end.

If you string together a set of speeches expressive of character, and well finished in point and diction and thought, you will not produce the essential tragic effect nearly so well as with a play which, however deficient in these... ...

For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other... ...

With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.

Accordingly, the poet should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities. The tragic plot must not be composed of irrational parts.

Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.

Homer is the main one who taught other poets how to tell lies skillfully.