Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

Poets are born, not paid.

- Mizner, Addison

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

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

Woolf, Virginia

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

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

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

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

Diderot, Denis

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

Ashbery, John

10.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

11.

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

12.

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.

13.

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.

14.

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

Barrymore, John

15.

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

16.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

17.

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

Ackerman, Diane

18.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

19.

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

Sandburg, Carl

20.

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

Marquis, Don

21.

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

Frost, Robert

22.

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

23.

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

Joyce, James

24.

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.

25.

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.

26.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

27.

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

28.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

Hare, David

33.

It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music.

Voltaire

34.

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

Engle, Paul

35.

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.)

36.

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

37.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

38.

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

Morley, Christopher

39.

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

40.

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

Frost, Robert

41.

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

42.

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

Bodenheim, Maxwell

43.

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.

44.

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

Plath, Sylvia

45.

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

46.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

47.

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

48.

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

Sandburg, Carl

49.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

50.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George