Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

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

Sandburg, Carl

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.

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

Aristotle

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

Graves, Robert

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

In the works of the better poets you get the sensation that they're not talking to people any more, or to some seraphical creature. What they're doing is simply talking back to the language itself --as beauty, sensuality, wisdom, irony --those aspects of language of which the poet is a clear mirror. Poetry is not an art or a branch of art, it's something more. If what distinguishes us from other species is speech, then poetry, which is the supreme linguistic operation, is our anthropological, indeed genetic, goal. Anyone who regards poetry as an entertainment, as a read, commits an anthropological crime, in the first place, against himself.

Brodsky, Joseph

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.

10.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

11.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

12.

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

Hare, David

13.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

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

15.

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

Cocteau, Jean

16.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

17.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

18.

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

19.

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

20.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

22.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

23.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

24.

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

Eliot, T. S.

25.

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

26.

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

Morley, Christopher

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

29.

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

Plath, Sylvia

30.

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

Ackerman, Diane

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.

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

33.

We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.

Drew, Elizabeth

34.

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

35.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

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.

39.

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

Horace

40.

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

Engle, Paul

41.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

42.

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

Field, Eugene

43.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

44.

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

Voltaire

45.

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

46.

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

47.

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

48.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

49.

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

Aristotle

50.

Poets wish to profit or to please.