Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

Frost, Robert

An age which is incapable of poetry is incapable of any kind of literature except the cleverness of a decadence.

Chandler, Raymond

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

Aristotle

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.

Bacon, Francis

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the sky.

Sandburg, Carl

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

Scott, Sir Walter

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

Sandburg, Carl

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers.

Horace

10.

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

11.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

12.

The job of the poet is to render the world -- to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.

Doren, Mark Van

13.

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

Fowles, John

14.

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

Plath, Sylvia

15.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

16.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

17.

Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.

Frye, Northrop

18.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

19.

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest.

Auden, W. H.

20.

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

21.

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

Dickinson, Emily

22.

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

Aristotle

23.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

24.

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.

25.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

Cocteau, Jean

26.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

Joubert, Joseph

28.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

29.

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

Engle, Paul

30.

A mighty good sausage stuffer was spoiled when the man became a poet.

Field, Eugene

31.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

32.

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

Renard, Jules

33.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

34.

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.

35.

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

Temple, Sir William

36.

It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

Cummings, E.E. (Edward. E.)

37.

She opened up a book of poems and handed it to me written by an Italian poet from the 13th century and every one of them words rang true and glowed like burning coal pouring off of every page like it was written in my soul from me to you.

Dylan, Bob

38.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

39.

The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation.

Fenton, James

40.

If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.

Brodsky, Joseph

41.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

42.

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.

Frost, Robert

43.

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.

44.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

45.

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

Voltaire

46.

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

47.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

48.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

49.

The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them; they rhyme.

Mallarme, Stephane

50.

A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.