Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

- Farquhar, George

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Horace

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''

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

Drew, Elizabeth

10.

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

Auden, W. H.

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

17.

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

Field, Eugene

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

21.

I have written some poetry that I don't understand myself.

Sandburg, Carl

22.

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

Plath, Sylvia

23.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

24.

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

Aristotle

25.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

26.

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

Aristotle

27.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

28.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

29.

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

Frost, Robert

30.

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.

31.

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.

32.

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.

33.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

34.

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

Eliot, T. S.

35.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

36.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

37.

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

Barrymore, John

38.

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

Fowles, John

39.

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

Horace

40.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

41.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

46.

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

47.

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

Engle, Paul

48.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

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.

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

Ashbery, John