Motivational Quotes

Poetry and poets

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

- Woolf, Virginia

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Plath, Sylvia

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

Joubert, Joseph

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Roux, Joseph

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.)

The eye is the notebook of the poet.

Lowell, James Russell

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.

Massinger, Philip

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

Horace

10.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

11.

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.

12.

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

13.

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

Aristotle

14.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

15.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

16.

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.

17.

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

Hare, David

18.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

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 is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

22.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

23.

Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.

Cocteau, Jean

24.

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.

25.

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.

26.

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

27.

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

Field, Eugene

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

Cocteau, Jean

31.

Every old poem is sacred.

Horace

32.

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

33.

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

Sandburg, Carl

34.

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

35.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

36.

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

37.

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

Ashbery, John

38.

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

39.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

40.

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

41.

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

42.

Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth -- the true poet is very near the oracle.

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

A person born with an instinct for poverty.

Hubbard, Elbert

46.

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

47.

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