Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Cocteau, Jean

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

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

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

Field, Eugene

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Barrymore, John

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.

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

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

10.

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

Sandburg, Carl

11.

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.)

12.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

13.

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.

14.

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

Woolf, Virginia

15.

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

16.

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

Marquis, Don

17.

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.

18.

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

19.

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

Dickinson, Emily

20.

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''

21.

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

22.

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.

23.

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

Aristotle

24.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

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

Aristotle

26.

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

27.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

28.

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

Frost, Robert

29.

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

Sandburg, Carl

30.

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

Graves, Robert

31.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

32.

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

33.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

34.

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

35.

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

Renard, Jules

36.

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

Fowles, John

37.

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

Chandler, Raymond

38.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

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.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

41.

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

Eliot, T. S.

42.

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

43.

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

Frost, Robert

44.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

45.

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.

46.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

47.

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

48.

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

Stedman, Captain J. G.

49.

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

Horace

50.

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.