If the poet be pure in his morals, he will be pure in his verses too; the pen is the tongue of the mind, and as the thought engendered there, so will be the things that it writes down. And when kings and princes observe this marvelous science of poetry in wise, virtuous, and thoughtful subjects, they honor, value, exalt them, and even crown them witt the leaves of that tree which the thunderbolt strikes not, as if to shos that they whose brows are honored and adorned with such a crown are not to be assailed by anyone.

Miguel de Cervantes in Don 
Quixote
 de
 la
 Mancha (1605), translated by John
 Ormsby
Added by Dan Costinaş
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