Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Thoreau, Henry David

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Engle, Paul

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

Woolf, Virginia

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''

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

Temple, Sir William

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

I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a suspension of belief. A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.

Auden, W. H.

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Hardy, Thomas

10.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

11.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

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

14.

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

Field, Eugene

15.

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

Graves, Robert

16.

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.

17.

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

Chandler, Raymond

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

Plath, Sylvia

21.

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

Sandburg, Carl

22.

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

23.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

27.

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

Horace

28.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

29.

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

30.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

31.

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

Ackerman, Diane

32.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

33.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

34.

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.

35.

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.

36.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

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

38.

This poem will never reach its destination. [On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity]

Voltaire

39.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

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.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

42.

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

Frost, Robert

43.

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

Joyce, James

44.

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.