Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Sitwell, Dame Edith

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Flaubert, Gustave

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

Horace

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Joyce, James

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Thoreau, Henry David

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

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

Frost, Robert

It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem. Every new relationship is a new word.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

10.

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

Sandburg, Carl

11.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

12.

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.

13.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

14.

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

Diderot, Denis

15.

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

Aristotle

16.

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

Horace

17.

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

18.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

19.

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

20.

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

Chandler, Raymond

21.

Any healthy man can go without food for two days -- but not without poetry.

Baudelaire, Charles

22.

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

Morley, Christopher

23.

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

24.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

25.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

26.

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

Hardy, Thomas

27.

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

Sandburg, Carl

28.

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

29.

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

Graves, Robert

30.

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

Horace

31.

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

Sandburg, Carl

32.

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

Ackerman, Diane

33.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

34.

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

Marquis, Don

35.

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

36.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

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

Hare, David

40.

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.

41.

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

Frost, Robert

42.

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.)

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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.

46.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

47.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

48.

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

Voltaire

49.

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

50.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle