Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Lamartine, Alphonse De

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Aristotle

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

Woolf, Virginia

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.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Joyce, James

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

Plath, Sylvia

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

Eliot, T. S.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

14.

I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down.

Frost, Robert

15.

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

Dickinson, Emily

16.

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

Diderot, Denis

17.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

18.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

19.

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

20.

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

Frost, Robert

21.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

22.

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

Sandburg, Carl

23.

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

Cocteau, Jean

24.

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

Morley, Christopher

25.

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

26.

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

Hardy, Thomas

27.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

Ashbery, John

29.

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

Ackerman, Diane

30.

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

31.

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

Joubert, Joseph

32.

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.

33.

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

Graves, Robert

34.

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

35.

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

Fowles, John

36.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

37.

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

38.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

39.

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

40.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

41.

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

42.

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

43.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

44.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

45.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

46.

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