Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Sitwell, Dame Edith

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Aristotle

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

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

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

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.

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

Eliot, T. S.

Poetry, the genre of purest beauty, was born of a truncated woman: her head severed from her body with a sword, a symbolic penis.

Dworkin, Andrea

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

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

Joyce, James

10.

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

Morley, Christopher

11.

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

12.

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

Frost, Robert

13.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

14.

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

15.

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

Horace

16.

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

Auden, W. H.

17.

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.)

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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''

20.

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

21.

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

Horace

22.

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

Chandler, Raymond

23.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

24.

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

Sandburg, Carl

25.

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.

26.

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

27.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

28.

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

Sandburg, Carl

29.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

30.

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

Hare, David

31.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

32.

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

33.

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

Barrymore, John

34.

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

Sandburg, Carl

35.

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

Field, Eugene

36.

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

37.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

38.

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

39.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

40.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

41.

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

Horace

42.

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

43.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

44.

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

45.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

46.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

47.

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

Marquis, Don

48.

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

Woolf, Virginia

49.

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

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