Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

Poetry is life distilled.

- Brooks, Gwendolyn

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

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

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

Hare, David

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

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

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

Frost, Robert

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

Sandburg, Carl

We must believe that emotion recollected in tranquillity is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not recollected and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is tranquil only in that it is a passive attending upon the event.

Eliot, T. S.

10.

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.)

11.

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

12.

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

Ackerman, Diane

13.

Poetry, the genre of purest beauty, was born of a truncated woman: her head severed from her body with a sword, a symbolic penis.

Dworkin, Andrea

14.

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

Woolf, Virginia

15.

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

Horace

16.

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

Aristotle

17.

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

18.

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

Horace

19.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

20.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

21.

There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.

Ashbery, John

22.

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

23.

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

24.

It seems just possible that a poem might happen to a very young man: but a poem is not poetry --That is a life.

Eliot, T. S.

25.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

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.

27.

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

Cocteau, Jean

28.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

29.

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

30.

We all write poems. It is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Fowles, John

31.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

32.

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

Dickinson, Emily

33.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

34.

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

Marquis, Don

35.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

36.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

37.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

38.

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

Joyce, James

39.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

40.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

41.

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

Renard, Jules

42.

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

43.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

44.

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

45.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

46.

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.

47.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

48.

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

Engle, Paul

49.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

50.

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