Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Horace

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Aristotle

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.

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

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.

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

Frost, Robert

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

Of all great poems, love is the absolute and essential foundation.

Fitzhugh, C.

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

Frost, Robert

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

Engle, Paul

10.

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

11.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

12.

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

13.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

14.

A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.

White, Elwyn Brooks

15.

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

16.

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.)

17.

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

Sandburg, Carl

18.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

19.

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

Morley, Christopher

20.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

21.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

22.

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

Field, Eugene

23.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

24.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

25.

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

26.

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.

27.

Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.

Auden, W. H.

28.

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

29.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

30.

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

Joubert, Joseph

31.

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

Plath, Sylvia

32.

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

Renard, Jules

33.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

34.

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

Aristotle

35.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

36.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

37.

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

38.

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

Graves, Robert

39.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

40.

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

41.

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

Marquis, Don

42.

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''

43.

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

Barrymore, John

44.

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

45.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

46.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

47.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

48.

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