Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Flaubert, Gustave

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Auden, W. H.

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 one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

Temple, Sir William

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

10.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

11.

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

Chandler, Raymond

12.

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

Morley, Christopher

13.

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

14.

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

Hardy, Thomas

15.

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

Barrymore, John

16.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

20.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

21.

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

22.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

23.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

24.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Aristotle

29.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

30.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

31.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

32.

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

Joubert, Joseph

33.

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.

34.

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.

35.

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.)

36.

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

Field, Eugene

37.

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

38.

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

Marquis, Don

39.

The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry.

Hare, David

40.

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

41.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

42.

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

Ashbery, John

43.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

44.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

45.

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

Aristotle

46.

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.

47.

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

Joyce, James

48.

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''

49.

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.

50.

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

Horace