Colette on poetry

In the matter of furnishing, I find a certain absence of ugliness far worse than ugliness.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

It takes time for the absent to assume their true shape in our thoughts. After death they take on a firmer outline and then cease to change.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

Robert Frost1874–1963

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

T. S. Eliot1888–1965“Philip Massinger”, a biographical essay, in The Sacred Wood (1920)

Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963Reflections on the Psalms