Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Horace

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

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

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.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

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

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

10.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

11.

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

12.

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

Temple, Sir William

13.

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

Aristotle

14.

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

Eco, Umberto

15.

Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind.

Bodenheim, Maxwell

16.

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

17.

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

Engle, Paul

18.

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.

19.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

20.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

21.

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

22.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

23.

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''

24.

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

Diderot, Denis

25.

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

26.

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.

Auden, W. H.

27.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

28.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

29.

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.

30.

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

Cocteau, Jean

31.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

32.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

33.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

34.

Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement... says heaven and earth in one word... speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.

Fry, Christopher

35.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

36.

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

Hardy, Thomas

37.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

38.

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.)

39.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

40.

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

Barrymore, John

41.

As a poet there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one's language against corruption. When it is corrupted, people lose faith in what they hear and this leads to violence.

Auden, W. H.

42.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

43.

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

44.

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

Plath, Sylvia

45.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

46.

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

47.

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

Joubert, Joseph

48.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

49.

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

Sandburg, Carl

50.

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