Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Chandler, Raymond

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Barrymore, John

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

Graves, Robert

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

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Byron, Lord

10.

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

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

14.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

15.

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

16.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

17.

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

18.

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

Woolf, Virginia

19.

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.

20.

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

Cocteau, Jean

21.

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

22.

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

Ackerman, Diane

23.

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

Horace

24.

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.)

25.

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

Frost, Robert

26.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

27.

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

28.

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

Dickinson, Emily

29.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

30.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

31.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

32.

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

Horace

33.

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

34.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

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.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

37.

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

Eliot, T. S.

38.

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

39.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

40.

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

Marquis, Don

41.

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

Ashbery, John

42.

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