Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Temple, Sir William

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

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.

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.)

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

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

Marquis, Don

10.

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.

11.

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.

Eliot, T. S.

12.

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

Aristotle

13.

Poetry is indispensable --if I only knew what for.

Cocteau, Jean

14.

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

Joubert, Joseph

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Poetry, the genre of purest beauty, was born of a truncated woman: her head severed from her body with a sword, a symbolic penis.

Dworkin, Andrea

20.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

21.

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

22.

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

Chandler, Raymond

23.

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

Horace

24.

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

25.

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.

26.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

27.

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

28.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

29.

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

30.

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

Sandburg, Carl

31.

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

Field, Eugene

32.

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

33.

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

Morley, Christopher

34.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

35.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

36.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

37.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

38.

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

Plath, Sylvia

39.

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

Voltaire

40.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

41.

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

42.

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

Horace

43.

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

Temple, Sir William

44.

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

Frost, Robert

45.

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