best quotations about
Poetry |
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Quotations
 | Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Ancient Greek philosopher 11 likes |
 | For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet. — Plato, 427-347 BC, Ancient Greek philosopher 10 likes |
 | It is easier to steal the club of Hercules than a line from Homer. — Virgil, 70-19 BC, Roman poet 9 likes |
 | Poetry is what gets lost in translation. — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, American poet 7 likes |
 | A poet looks at the world as a man looks at a woman. — Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955, American poet 6 likes |
 | If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul, you haven’t experienced poetry. — Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, American writer 6 likes |
| Poetry is for an intelligent man or a madman. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Ancient Greek philosopher 5 likes |
 | Poetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance. — Carl Sandburg, 1878-1967, American poet 5 likes |
 | The poet doesn't invent. He listens. — Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963, French artist 5 likes |
 | Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me. — Sigmund Freud, 1856-1939, Austrian psychologist, founder of psychoanalysis 5 likes |
| Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die. — Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, American writer 5 likes |
 | Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in their best order. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, English poet & philosopher 4 likes |
 | All the seven deadly sins are peccadilloes but without three of them, Pride, Lust, and Sloth, poetry might never have been born. — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 4 likes |
 | Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. — Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890, Dutch painter 4 likes |
 | Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers. 4 likes |
 | Always be a poet, even in prose. — Charles Baudelaire, 1821-1867, French poet 4 likes |
 | The reason we go to poetry is not for wisdom, but for the dismantling of wisdom. — Jacques Lacan, 1901-1981, French psychoanalyst 4 likes |
 | Your very flesh shall be a great poem. — Walt Whitman, 1819-1892, American poet 4 likes |
 | I am almost afraid to touch “Odyssey”; its beauty is unbearable. — Ibn Khaldoun, 1332-1406, Arab historian & sage 4 likes |
 | You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. — Joseph Joubert, 1754-1824, French author of maxims 4 likes |
 | Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings. — W.H. Auden, 1907-1973, British poet 4 likes |
 | Poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. It remembers that it was first song. — Jorge Luis Borges, 1899-1986, Argentine writer 4 likes |
 | Poetry is something in-between the dream and its interpretation. — Lou Andreas-Salomé, 1861-1937, Russian-German writer & psychoanalyst 4 likes |
| The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. — Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, American writer 4 likes |
| It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem. — Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955, American poet 4 likes |
 | A poet can survive everything but a misprint. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 4 likes |
| For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Ancient Greek philosopher 3 likes |
| It is easier to steal the club of Hercules than a line from Homer. — Virgil, 70-19 BC, Roman poet 3 likes |
 | Almost all poetry is a failure, because it sounds like somebody saying, Look, I have written a poem! — Charles Bukowski, 1920-1994, American writer 3 likes |
| The poet is the priest of the invisible. — Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955, American poet 3 likes |
| Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully. — Aristotle, 384-322 BC, Ancient Greek philosopher 3 likes |
 | Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. — Joseph Roux, 1834-1905, French clergyman & poet 3 likes |
| Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes. — Joseph Roux, 1834-1905, French clergyman & poet 3 likes |
 | Poetry must be new as foam, and as old as the rock. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803-1884, American philosopher 3 likes |
 | One Power alone makes a Poet: Imagination. The Divine Vision. — William Blake, 1757-1827, English poet & painter 3 likes |
| Not the poem which we have read, but that to which we return, with the greatest pleasure, possesses the genuine power, and claims the name of essential poetry. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, English poet & philosopher 3 likes |
| No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, English poet & philosopher 3 likes |
| Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for. — Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963, French artist 3 likes |
| The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood. — Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963, French artist 3 likes |
 | Poetry is a separate language, or more specifically, a language within a language. — Paul Valery, 1871-1945, French poet 3 likes |
| To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, American poet 3 likes |
| Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, American poet 3 likes |
 | Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us. — T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, British poet, Nobel 1948 3 likes |
 | O happy youth! in having found a Homer to celebrate thy virtues! — Alexander the Great, 356-323 BC, King of Macedon (at the tomb of Achilles) 3 likes |
 | A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage. — Erica Jong, 1942-, American writer 3 likes |
 | The epic disappeared along with the age of personal heroism; there can be no epic with artillery. — Ernest Renan, 1823-1892, French philosopher & historian 3 likes |
 | One cannot build life from refrigerators, politics, credit statements and crossword puzzles. That is impossible. Nor can one exist for any length of time without poetry, without color, without love. — Antoin de Saint-Exupéry, 1900-1940, French writer 3 likes |
| Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. — Edgar Allan Poe, 1809-1849, American writer 3 likes |
| ...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough? — Vincent Van Gogh, 1853-1890, Dutch painter 3 likes |
 | Homer, the sovereign poet. — Dante, 1265-1321, Italian poet 3 likes |
 | I am the poet of the poor, because I was poor when I loved; since I could not give gifts, I gave words. — Ovid, 43 BC-17 AD, Roman poet 3 likes |
 | A poet more than thirty years old is simply an overgrown child. — H.L. Mencken, 1880-1956, American columnist & cultural critic 2 likes |
| While the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 2 likes |
| Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite impressions. — Joseph Roux, 1834-1905, French clergyman & poet 2 likes |
| There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope. — Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900, Irish writer 2 likes |
 | Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. — Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English writer 2 likes |
| To a poet nothing can be useless. — Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, English writer 2 likes |
| The book of Job is pure Arab poetry of the highest and most antique cast. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, English poet & philosopher 2 likes |
 | If poetry does not come as naturally as leaves to a tree, then it better not come at all. — John Keats, 1795-1821, English poet 2 likes |
| Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity --it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. — John Keats, 1795-1821, English poet 2 likes |
 | A great poet belongs to no country; his works are public property, and his memoirs the inheritance of the public. — Lord Byron, 1788-1824, British poet 2 likes |
 | Inspiration is a farce that poets have invented to give themselves importance. — Jean Anouilh, 1910-1987, French playwright 2 likes |
| Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment. — Carl Sandburg, 1878-1967, American poet 2 likes |
| A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses. — Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963, French artist 2 likes |
| Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. — Jean Cocteau, 1889-1963, French artist 2 likes |
| Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking. — Paul Valery, 1871-1945, French poet 2 likes |
| A bad poem is one that vanishes into meaning. — Paul Valery, 1871-1945, French poet 2 likes |
 | The literate, the erudite, the learned mount by means of ladders; poets and artists are birds. — Victor Hugo, 1802-1885, French writer 2 likes |
 | Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry. — Alfred North Whitehead, 1861-1947, British philosopher & mathematician 2 likes |
| A complete poem is one where an emotion finds the thought and the thought finds the words. — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, American poet 2 likes |
| Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal. — T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, British poet, Nobel 1948 2 likes |
| Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. — T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, British poet, Nobel 1948 2 likes |
| Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. — T. S. Eliot, 1888-1965, British poet, Nobel 1948 2 likes |
 | If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week. — Charles Darwin, 1809-1882, British scientist 2 likes |
 | Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it. — Rumi, 1207-1273, Persian mystic & poet 2 likes |
 | Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry. — Friedrich von Schlegel, 1772-1829, German writer 2 likes |
| Whatever can be done while poetry and philosophy are separated has been done and accomplished. So the time has come to unite the two. — Friedrich von Schlegel, 1772-1829, German writer 2 likes |
 | A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. — E. M. Forster, 1879-1970, British writer 2 likes |
| Poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth. — E. M. Forster, 1879-1970, British writer 2 likes |
| Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young. — Antoin de Saint-Exupéry, 1900-1940, French writer 2 likes |
 | The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on. — Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886, American poet 2 likes |
 | Virgil had the gift of expressing much in little, and sometimes in silence. — John Dryden, 1631-1700, English poet 2 likes |
 | Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he’s the Lord of all Creation. — Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012, American sci-fi writer 2 likes |
| A person hoping to become a poet must have the capacity of thinking of several things at a time. — Vladimir Nabokov, 1899-1977, Russian-American writer 2 likes |
| Poetry is what happens when nothing else can. |
 | He who would write heroic poems should make his whole life a heroic poem. |
| A poet without love were a physical and metaphysical impossibility. |
 | Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. |
 | Virgil is serene and lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair. |
 | We must not forget that in the long twenty-five centuries there has not been one that poetry was not written in the Greek language. |
| Gods, not wanting to deprive the Greeks of the truth, they gave them poetry. |
| You arrive at truth through poetry; I arrive at poetry through truth. |
| Nothing which does not transport is poetry. The lyre is a winged instrument. |
 | Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have: Cincinnati sounds worse. |
 | Poetry is as precise a thing as geometry. |
 | Poetry is only born after painful journeys into the vast regions of thought. |
 | If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. |
| He was a poet and hated the approximate. |
 | I am attracted to ellipsis, to the unsaid, to suggestion, to eloquent, deliberate silence. The unsaid, for me, exerts great power: often I wish an entire poem could be made in this vocabulary. It is analogous to the unseen. |
| The poem will not survive on content but through voice. By voice I mean the style of thought, for which a style of speech never convincingly substitutes. |
| The advantage of poetry over life is that poetry, if it is sharp enough, may last. |
 | Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else. |
| All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it. |
 | The word poet literally means maker: anything which is not well made doesn’t exist. |
| Yes, the work comes out more beautiful from a material that resists the process, verse, marble, onyx, or enamel. |
 | Excessive brightness drove the poet into darkness. — Martin Heidegger, 1889-1976, German philosopher (about Hölderlin) |
 | I think of mythology as the homeland of the muses, the inspirers of art, the inspirers of poetry. To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you. |
| As a poet, there is only one political duty, and that is to defend one’s language from corruption. |
| A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects. |
| To some degree every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. |
| A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. |
 | The wine is bottled poetry. |
 | The divorce of poetry and music was first reflected by the printed page. — Marshall McLuhan, 1911-1980, Canadian academic & media theorist |
| The truth is: nobody bothers to kill poets in America. It's enough to buy them in universities. Undead. |
 | In the beginning was the myth. God, in his search for self-expression, invested the souls of Hindus, Greeks, and Germans with poetic shapes and continues to invest each child’s soul with poetry every day. |
 | A poet is someone who tries to grab the water by handfuls. It is only when he succeeds that he is a poet. |
| The central fact of my life has been the existence of words and the possibility of weaving those words into poetry. |
 | It is possible to become a painter, a sculptor, or a musician by study, but not a dramatic poet; a man is so either at once or never, as he is blonde or brown, and cannot help it. |
 | The poet speaks adequately only when he speaks somewhat wildly... not with intellect alone, but with intellect inebriated by nectar. |
 | He was a poet; and they are never exactly grown-up. |
 | The great philosophers are poets who believe in the reality of their poems. |
| In order to write poetry, you must first invent a poet who will write it. |
 | Poets are like proverbs: you can always find one to contradict another. |
 | I would rather be a swineherd, understood by the swine, than a poet misunderstood by men. |
 | The man with creative imagination, like a poet, must believe in God. Ab Jove principium Musis – the muses begin with Zeus. |
 | You deserve a lover who takes away the lies and brings you hope, coffee, and poetry. |
 | Poetry is made in a bed like love. Her undone sheets are the dawn of things. — André Breton, 1896-1966, French writer, founder of Surrealism |
 | Poetry has been the guardian angel of humanity in all ages. |
| Poets are the voices of those who have no voice. |
 | Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do. |
 | Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. |
 | A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. |
 | Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event. |
 | Poetry rescues things by reconciling matter and spirit in the metaphor. |
Personal Stories
| I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. — Carl Sandburg, 1878-1967, American poet 2 likes |
Quotes in Verse
| Throw away the light, the definitions, and say what you see in the dark. — Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955, American poet 7 likes |
| The poem must resist the intelligence Almost successfully. — Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955, American poet 4 likes |
| Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat. — Robert Frost, 1874-1963, American poet 4 likes |
| This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence overcomes me and I wonder why I ever thought to use language. — Rumi, 1207-1273, Persian mystic & poet 4 likes |
| A poem is a meteor. — Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955, American poet 4 likes |
 | Many verses are like doors, locked doors in deserted houses. |
Funny Quotes
 | I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything. — Steven Wright, 1955-, American comedian 4 likes |
 | Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. — G. K. Chesterton, 1874-1936, English writer & critic 3 likes |
Ancient Greek
 | Love of course teaches poetry, even to those who had no idea about poetry before. Ποιητήν δ’ άρα Έρως διδάσκει, καν άμουσος ή το πριν. — Euripides, 480-406 BC, Ancient Greek tragedian 6 likes |
 | Children have a master to teach them, grown-ups have the poets. Τοις μεν γαρ παιδαρίοισιν έστι διδάσκαλος όστις φράζει, τοίσιν δ᾽ ηβώσι ποιηταί. — Aristophanes, 445-386 BC, Ancient Greek comic playwright ‐ Frogs 3 likes |
Movie Quotes
 | Do you know what illuminates the night? Poetry. — from the film Alphaville (1965) 6 likes |
