Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

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Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Hare, David

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

Dickinson, Emily

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

Plath, Sylvia

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

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

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

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

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

Hardy, Thomas

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

Fitzhugh, C.

10.

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

11.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

12.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

13.

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

Keats, John

14.

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

Horace

15.

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

Marquis, Don

16.

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.

17.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

18.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

19.

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.

White, Elwyn Brooks

20.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

21.

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.

22.

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

Voltaire

23.

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.)

24.

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.

25.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

26.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

Cocteau, Jean

27.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

28.

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

29.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

30.

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

Field, Eugene

31.

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

Cocteau, Jean

32.

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

Aristotle

33.

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

Diderot, Denis

34.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

35.

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.

36.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Renard, Jules

41.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

42.

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

Aristotle

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

46.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

47.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

48.

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