Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Horace

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Horace

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

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

Joyce, James

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

Thoreau, Henry David

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

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.

I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.

Ginsberg, Allen

10.

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

Field, Eugene

11.

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.)

12.

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

Ackerman, Diane

13.

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.

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

Dickinson, Emily

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

20.

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

21.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

22.

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

Fowles, John

23.

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

Voltaire

24.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

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

Joubert, Joseph

28.

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

29.

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

Horace

30.

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.

31.

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

Eliot, T. S.

32.

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

Sandburg, Carl

33.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

34.

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

Horace

35.

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

Barrymore, John

36.

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

37.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

38.

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

39.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

41.

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

Woolf, Virginia

42.

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

Hare, David

43.

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

Aristotle

44.

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

45.

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

46.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

47.

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

48.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

49.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

50.

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''