Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Joyce, James

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

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

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

Ackerman, Diane

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

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

Fitzhugh, C.

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Frost, Robert

14.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

15.

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

16.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

17.

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

Engle, Paul

18.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

19.

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

20.

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.

21.

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

Woolf, Virginia

22.

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

23.

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

Aristotle

24.

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.

25.

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.)

26.

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

27.

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

Temple, Sir William

28.

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

Diderot, Denis

29.

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

30.

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

Frost, Robert

31.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

32.

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

Morley, Christopher

33.

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

Sandburg, Carl

34.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

35.

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''

36.

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

Marquis, Don

37.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

38.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

39.

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

40.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

41.

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

Graves, Robert

42.

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

43.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Joubert, Joseph

44.

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

Chandler, Raymond

45.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

46.

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

Eliot, T. S.

47.

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

48.

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

Hare, David

49.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

50.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George