Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

- Marquis, Don

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Chandler, Raymond

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''

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

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.

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

Marquis, Don

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

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.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

10.

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

Horace

11.

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

Ackerman, Diane

12.

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

Sandburg, Carl

13.

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

Graves, Robert

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

Auden, W. H.

17.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

18.

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

19.

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

Temple, Sir William

20.

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

21.

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

Aristotle

22.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

23.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

24.

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

25.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

26.

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

Horace

27.

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

28.

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

Plath, Sylvia

29.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

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

31.

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

Frost, Robert

32.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

33.

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

Hare, David

34.

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.

35.

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.

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Renard, Jules

40.

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

Sandburg, Carl

41.

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

Dickinson, Emily

42.

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

Woolf, Virginia

43.

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

Field, Eugene

44.

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

Diderot, Denis

45.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

46.

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.

47.

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.

48.

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

Scott, Sir Walter

49.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

50.

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.