Poetry Quotes
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I'll publish, right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
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More Poetry Quotes
A speech is poetry: cadence, rhythm, imagery, sweep! A speech reminds us that words, like children, have the power to make dance the dullest beanbag of a heart.
Peggy Noonan— What I Saw at the Revolution (1990)
Something of glass about her, of dead water, Chills and holds us, Far more fatal than painted flesh or the lodestone of live hair, This despair of crystal brilliance.
louis macneice— 1935 Poems,'Circe'.
My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring; And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze; For above and around me the wild wind is roaring, Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.
anne brontë— 1846 'Line Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day', in Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell.
There's something in a flying horse, There's something in a huge balloon.
william wordsworth— William Wordsworth, Peter Bell. Prologue, Stanza 1.
We dance round in a ring and suppose, But the Secret sits in the middle and knows
robert frost— 1942 'The Secret Sits', complete poem.
Poetry is a rich, full-blooded whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbers the leaf, the duet of two nightingales, the sweet pea, that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades.
wallace stevens— Quoted in Life, 13 June 1960.
[I] do not like poems that resemble hay compressed into a geometrically perfect cube. I like it when the hay, unkempt, uncombed, with dry berries mixed in it, thrown together gaily and freely, bounces along atop some truck—and more, if there are some lovely and healthy lasses atop the hay—and better yet if the branches catch at the hay, and some of it tumbles to the road.
yevgeny yevtushenko— New York Times (2 February 1986)
I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence this may look like affectation but it is my real opinion it is the lava of the imagination, whose eruption prevents an earthquake
lord byron— Letter to Annabella Milbanke (29 November 1813).
Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.
james branch cabell— James Branch Cabell, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice (1919).
Human beings love poetry. They don't even know it sometimes... whether they're the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber... they're listening to poetry.
maya angelou
Coffee, (which makes the politician wise, And see through all things with his half-shut eyes), Sent up in vapours to the baron's brain, New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.
Alexander Pope— The Rape of the Lock, Canto III, line 117.
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle— Poetics (335) 1451b 6.
He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
George Sand— George Sand, The Haunted Pool (1890) ch. 2.
Still may syllables jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, * Resting never!
Ben Jonson— Ben Jonson, Underwoods, Fit of Rhyme Against Rhyme.
My mother asked me what I wanted for my birthday, so I said I wanted to read poetry with her.
guy Johnson
I'll publish right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
lord byron— Line 5, "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers" (1809)
Hark! to the hurried question of despair: "Where is my child?" an echo answers, "Where?"
lord byron— "The Bride of Abydos," Canto II, stanza 27
Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows, and of lending existence to nothing.
Edmund Burke— Edmund Burke, Memoir of the life and character of Edmund Burke by James Prior
Poetry = the best words in their best order.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge— Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Table Talk (12 July 1827).
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.
ralph waldo emerson— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836), Ch. 8; Emerson ascribed this to Plato but it is actually a paraphrasing by Emerson of two quotations from Plato and Aristotle.
I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.
robert frost— Robert Frost, Conversations on the Craft of Poetry (1959); often quoted as "Poetry is what gets lost in translation".
All that is worth remembering in life, is the poetry of it.
william hazlitt— William Hazlitt, Lectures on the English Poets (1818) Lecture I, "On Poetry in General".
As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.
— Thomas Babington Macaulay, On Milton (1825).
A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Alexander Pope— Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1709), Part II, line 156.
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
william shakespeare— Sonnet LV
We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.
William Butler Yeats— Essays (1924) "Anima Hominis".
A drainless shower Of light is poesy: 'tis the supreme of power; 'Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm.
john keats— John Keats, Sleep and Poetry, line 237.
I consider poetry very subordinate to moral and political science.
Percy Bysshe Shelley— Letter to Thomas Love Peacock, from Naples (26 January 1819).
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.
Plato— Plato, The Republic, Book II, Section V
