Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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.

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

Auden, W. H.

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.

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

Hardy, Thomas

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

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

Temple, Sir William

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

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

Ackerman, Diane

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

10.

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

Sandburg, Carl

11.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

12.

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

Aristotle

13.

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.

14.

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''

15.

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

Renard, Jules

16.

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

Barrymore, John

17.

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

18.

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

Hare, David

19.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

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.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Sandburg, Carl

25.

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

Horace

26.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

27.

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

28.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

29.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

30.

I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.

Ginsberg, Allen

31.

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

32.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

33.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

34.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

35.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

36.

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.

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Horace

41.

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

Horace

42.

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

Eliot, T. S.

43.

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