Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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.

- White, Elwyn Brooks

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

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

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

Plath, Sylvia

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

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.

White, Elwyn Brooks

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Chandler, Raymond

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

Aristotle

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

Joyce, James

10.

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

Horace

11.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

12.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

Ginsberg, Allen

13.

The man is either mad, or he is making verses.

Horace

14.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

15.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

16.

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.

17.

Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

Baudelaire, Charles

18.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Keats, John

19.

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.

20.

Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

Marquis, Don

21.

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

22.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

23.

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Woolf, Virginia

24.

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

25.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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

Morley, Christopher

27.

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

Barrymore, John

28.

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

Field, Eugene

29.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

30.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

31.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

32.

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

Hardy, Thomas

33.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

34.

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

Sandburg, Carl

35.

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

Dickinson, Emily

36.

A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.

Ackerman, Diane

37.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

38.

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

Diderot, Denis

39.

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

40.

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

Graves, Robert

41.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

42.

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

Voltaire

43.

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

Flaubert, Gustave

44.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you --like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist --or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

45.

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

Fowles, John

46.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

47.

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

48.

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

Cocteau, Jean

49.

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.

50.

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