To be a poet at twenty is to be twenty; to be a poet at forty is to be a poet.

[Écrire des vers à vingt ans, c’est avoir vingt ans. En écrire à quarante, c’est être poète.]

Eugène Delacroix (1799-1863) French painter [Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix]

(Attributed)

A review of English sources shows nearly all attributions of this quotation are to Delacroix, albeit without citation to where/when he said or wrote it.

There are some references attributing it to French poet Charles Péguy (1873-1914), e.g., Daniel Halevy's study of Péguy, Péguy and Les Cahiers de la Quinzaine, ch. 12, epigraph (1940) [tr. Bethell (1947)]), but even there, no actual citation is provided.

A few attributions can also be found to Canadian poet Louis Dudek (1918-2001).

A review of French sources show the quotation widely attributed to French author Francis Carco (1886-1958), but, again, I cannot find any actual citations of when or where Carco may have said or written that.