Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Renard, Jules

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

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

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

Aristotle

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

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.

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

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

Baudelaire, Charles

10.

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

Hardy, Thomas

11.

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

Dickinson, Emily

12.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

13.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

14.

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

15.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

16.

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.

17.

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

Hare, David

18.

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

19.

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

Barrymore, John

20.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

21.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

23.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

24.

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

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.

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

Frost, Robert

27.

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

Marquis, Don

28.

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

Horace

29.

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

Plath, Sylvia

30.

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

Sandburg, Carl

31.

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

Morley, Christopher

32.

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

Aristotle

33.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

34.

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

Horace

35.

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

36.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

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.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Voltaire

41.

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

Field, Eugene

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

Ackerman, Diane

45.

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

Renard, Jules

46.

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

47.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

48.

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

49.

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

Horace

50.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David