Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Marquis, Don

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Field, Eugene

A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.

Renard, Jules

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

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

Scott, Sir Walter

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

Voltaire

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

Cocteau, Jean

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

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.

10.

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

11.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

12.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

13.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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.

17.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

18.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Diderot, Denis

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

27.

Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to thosewho need it.

28.

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

Temple, Sir William

29.

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

Plath, Sylvia

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.

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

Chandler, Raymond

32.

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.

33.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

34.

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

35.

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

Graves, Robert

36.

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

Sandburg, Carl

37.

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

Joubert, Joseph

38.

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

Hare, David

39.

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

40.

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.)

41.

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

42.

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

Ashbery, John

43.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

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.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

46.

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

Frost, Robert

47.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

48.

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

49.

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

Horace

50.

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