Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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.

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

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

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

Flaubert, Gustave

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

10.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

11.

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.

12.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

13.

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

14.

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

Horace

15.

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.

16.

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

Dickinson, Emily

17.

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

Horace

18.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.

Baudelaire, Charles

19.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

20.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

21.

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

Ackerman, Diane

22.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

23.

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.

24.

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

Aristotle

25.

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

Hardy, Thomas

26.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

27.

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

Sandburg, Carl

28.

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

29.

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

Chandler, Raymond

30.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

31.

You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.

Joubert, Joseph

32.

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

Barrymore, John

33.

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

34.

Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.

Scott, Sir Walter

35.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

36.

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

37.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

38.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

39.

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.

40.

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

Plath, Sylvia

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

Morley, Christopher

44.

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

Joyce, James

45.

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

Graves, Robert

46.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

47.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

48.

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

49.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

Cocteau, Jean

50.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph