Motivational Quotes

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.

Best Quotes about Poetry and poets

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

Chandler, Raymond

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

Marquis, Don

Poets are born, not paid.

Mizner, Addison

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

Aristotle

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

Stedman, Captain J. G.

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

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

Voltaire

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

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Hare, David

10.

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

Diderot, Denis

11.

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

12.

Poetry is life distilled.

Brooks, Gwendolyn

13.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

Marquis, Don

14.

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

Lamartine, Alphonse De

15.

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

Joubert, Joseph

16.

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.

17.

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

18.

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

Field, Eugene

19.

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

20.

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

Sandburg, Carl

21.

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.

22.

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

Joyce, James

23.

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''

24.

Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.

Farquhar, George

25.

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

Sandburg, Carl

26.

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

Morley, Christopher

27.

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

28.

A poet can survive anything but a misprint.

Wilde, Oscar

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Woolf, Virginia

33.

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Engle, Paul

34.

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

Plath, Sylvia

35.

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

36.

Poets wish to profit or to please.

Horace

37.

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

Colette, Sidonie Gabrielle

38.

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

Hare, David

39.

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

Hardy, Thomas

40.

Poetry is what is lost in translation.

Frost, Robert

41.

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

Fitzhugh, C.

42.

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

Fitzgerald, Robert

43.

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

Horace

44.

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

Frost, Robert

45.

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

Chapin, Edwin Hubbel

46.

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.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Auden, W. H.

50.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo