Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

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

Dickinson, Emily

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

Frost, Robert

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

Aristotle

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

Ackerman, Diane

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

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

Horace

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

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

Temple, Sir William

10.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

11.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

Diderot, Denis

12.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

13.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

14.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

15.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

16.

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

Engle, Paul

17.

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.

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

20.

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.)

21.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

22.

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

Joyce, James

23.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

24.

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

Chandler, Raymond

25.

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

26.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

28.

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

Ashbery, John

29.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

30.

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

Graves, Robert

31.

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

Frost, Robert

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Sandburg, Carl

36.

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

Fowles, John

37.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

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

Plath, Sylvia

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.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

41.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

42.

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

43.

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''

44.

This poem will never reach its destination. [On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity]

Voltaire

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

48.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

49.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

50.

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