Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Rilke, Rainer Maria

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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.

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.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

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.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

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

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

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

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

10.

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

11.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

12.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

13.

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

Sandburg, Carl

14.

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.

15.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

16.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

17.

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

18.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

19.

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

Frost, Robert

20.

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

21.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

22.

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

Dickinson, Emily

23.

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

24.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

25.

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

26.

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''

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

29.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

30.

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

31.

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

32.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

33.

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

Diderot, Denis

34.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

35.

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

Sandburg, Carl

36.

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

Horace

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

40.

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

41.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

42.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth -- the true poet is very near the oracle.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

43.

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

Fowles, John

44.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

45.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

46.

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

47.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

48.

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

Horace

49.

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.

50.

The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.

Sitwell, Dame Edith