Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.

Frost, Robert

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

Marquis, Don

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

Fowles, John

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

Sitwell, Dame Edith

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.

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

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

Temple, Sir William

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

Flaubert, Gustave

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

Renard, Jules

10.

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.

11.

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

12.

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

Voltaire

13.

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.

14.

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

15.

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.

16.

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

17.

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

Eliot, T. S.

18.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

19.

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

Morley, Christopher

20.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

21.

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

Hazlitt, William

22.

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

Aristotle

23.

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

Sandburg, Carl

24.

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

Hardy, Thomas

25.

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

26.

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

Barrymore, John

27.

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

Diderot, Denis

28.

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

Sandburg, Carl

29.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

30.

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

31.

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.

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

Chandler, Raymond

35.

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

36.

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

Field, Eugene

37.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

38.

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

39.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

40.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

41.

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

42.

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

Joubert, Joseph

43.

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

44.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

45.

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

46.

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

Baudelaire, Charles

47.

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

Horace

48.

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

49.

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