Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.
Interpretation
Poetry creatively expresses ideas in a way that might seem nonsensical but is deeply insightful.
Isaac Newton's quote suggests that poetry, although it may appear to lack rational structure or logic, possesses a unique intelligence that can communicate profound truths and emotions. This 'ingenious nonsense' reflects the inherent beauty and complexity of human experience, highlighting poetry's ability to transcend ordinary understanding and engage the imagination.
In practice
In a speech about creativity, one might say, 'As Isaac Newton said, poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense, reminding us that true expression sometimes defies logic.'
The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.
And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen.
My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
I think it's insulting to an audience to make them sit and watch a film and then give them a message in one sentence.
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.
I hope that my life ends up being my greatest work of art, not just my music.
Poetry can't give us the laws and institutions and representatives, the antidotes we need: only public activism by massive numbers of citizens can do that.
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
A great work of art is one that truly moves and inspires you. You yourself must be moved. Don't look at art with others' eyes. Don't listen to music with others' ears. You must react to art with your own feelings, your own heart and mind.
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