Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Thoreau, Henry David

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

I have a new method of poetry. All you got to do is look over your notebooks... or lay down on a couch, and think of anything that comes into your head, especially the miseries. Then arrange in lines of two, three or four words each, don't bother about sentences, in sections of two, three or four lines each.

Ginsberg, Allen

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.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

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.

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

Temple, Sir William

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''

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

Frost, Robert

10.

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.

11.

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

Cocteau, Jean

12.

We all write poems. It is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

Fowles, John

13.

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.)

14.

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

Frost, Robert

15.

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

Barrymore, John

16.

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

17.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

18.

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

Plath, Sylvia

19.

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

Horace

20.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

21.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to thosewho need it.

23.

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

Woolf, Virginia

24.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

25.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

26.

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

27.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

28.

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

Voltaire

29.

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

Flaubert, Gustave

30.

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

Marquis, Don

31.

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Stevens, Wallace

32.

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

33.

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

34.

Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

35.

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

Auden, W. H.

36.

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

Sandburg, Carl

37.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

38.

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

39.

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

Hare, David

40.

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

Ashbery, John

41.

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.

42.

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

43.

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

44.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

45.

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

46.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

47.

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

Voltaire

48.

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

49.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.