Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Hardy, Thomas

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

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.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

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

Hare, David

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

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

Sandburg, Carl

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

Barrymore, John

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

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.

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

12.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

13.

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

14.

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

Aristotle

15.

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.

16.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

17.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

21.

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

Horace

22.

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

23.

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

Dickinson, Emily

24.

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

25.

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

Sandburg, Carl

26.

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

27.

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.

28.

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

Horace

29.

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

Frost, Robert

30.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

31.

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

32.

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

Graves, Robert

33.

I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.

Ginsberg, Allen

34.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

35.

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.

36.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

37.

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

Horace

38.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

39.

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

Hardy, Thomas

40.

There is only beauty -- and it has only one perfect expression -- poetry. All the rest is a lie --except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.

Mallarme, Stephane

41.

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

42.

Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you --like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist --or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.

43.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

44.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

45.

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

46.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace