Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready. – Eugenio Montale
There is also poetry written to be shouted in a square in front of an enthusiastic crowd. This occurs especially in countries where authoritarian regimes are in power. – Eugenio Montale
The most dangerous aspect of present-day life is the dissolution of the feeling of individual responsibility. Mass solitude has done away with any difference between the internal and the external, between the intellectual and the physical. – Eugenio Montale
This proves that great lyric poetry can die, be reborn, die again, but will always remain one of the most outstanding creations of the human soul. – Eugenio Montale
People who make puns are like wanton boys that put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse themselves and other children, but their little trick may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake of a battered witticism. – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, 1858