Poetry comes fine-spun from a mind at peace.

Qui finem quaeris amoris/Cedit amor rebus; res age, tutus eris.

So long as you are secure you will count many friends; if your life becomes clouded you will be alone.

Resist beginnings; the prescription comes too late when the disease has gained strength by long delays.

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did origi…

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

He cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets, which he said were like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, others too long cut s…