Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

Poetry, the genre of purest beauty, was born of a truncated woman: her head severed from her body with a sword, a symbolic penis.

- Dworkin, Andrea

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

Ashbery, John

Of all great poems, love is the absolute and essential foundation.

Fitzhugh, C.

Between religion's this is and poetry's but suppose this is, there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.

Frye, Northrop

Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.

Thoreau, Henry David

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it.

Plath, Sylvia

To a poet, silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water.

Horace

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.

Auden, W. H.

10.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

Lamartine, Alphonse De

11.

This poem will never reach its destination. [On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity]

Voltaire

12.

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Sitwell, Dame Edith

13.

Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling.

Eliot, T. S.

14.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Aristotle

15.

There is only beauty -- and it has only one perfect expression -- poetry. All the rest is a lie --except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

Mallarme, Stephane

16.

The courage of the poets is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

Morley, Christopher

17.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

18.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Diderot, Denis

19.

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

Auden, W. H.

20.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

Voltaire

21.

Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.

Hardy, Thomas

22.

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

Stedman, Captain J. G.

23.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

24.

Poetry must be as new as foam and as old as the rock.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

Poetry is indispensable --if I only knew what for.

Cocteau, Jean

26.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth -- the true poet is very near the oracle.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

27.

We must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.

Eliot, T. S.

28.

Poetry is the special medium of spiritual crazy wisdom, the form of expression that comes closest to creating a bridge between words and what is wordless.

Nisker, Wes ''Scoop''

29.

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry --That is a life.

Eliot, T. S.

30.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Joubert, Joseph

31.

I've read some of your modern free verse and wonder who set it free.

Barrymore, John

32.

When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Kennedy, John F.

33.

Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to thosewho need it.

34.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Joyce, James

35.

Homer has taught all other poets the are of telling lies skillfully.

Aristotle

36.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.

Baudelaire, Charles

37.

Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.

Sandburg, Carl

38.

Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.

Fitzgerald, Robert

39.

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.

Renard, Jules

40.

If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

Graves, Robert

41.

Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose.

Landor, Walter Savage

42.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

43.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

44.

I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence --this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.

Byron, Lord

45.

We all write poems. It is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Fowles, John

46.

I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

Frost, Robert

47.

Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us.

Artaud, Antonin

48.

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.

Eliot, T. S.

49.

As to Don Juan, confess that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? It may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?

Byron, Lord

50.

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Engle, Paul