Poetry Quotes
Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.Adrian Mitchell
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heartfelt truth. The true poet is very near the oracle.Edward Hubbell Chaplin
Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.Socrates, In "Apology, " sct. 21, by Plato.
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.Oscar Wilde
I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.Russell Bake
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.John Keats
The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.Frederick William Robertson
I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.T. S. Eliot
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.John Ruskin
Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.Johnson
The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.Donald E. Knuth
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.Martin Luther King, Jr.
Some people go to priests others to poetry I to my friends.Virginia
Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters in prose.Beverly Nichols
The greatest poem is not that which is most skillfully constructed, but that in which there is the most poetry.L. Schefe
In general, in poetry and literature, I am among those people who believe that too much is indispensable.Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.Plato
Marty This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.This Is Spinal Tap
Poetry often enters through the window of irrelevance.M. C. Richards
We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.Christopher Fry
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.Oscar Wilde
There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either.Robert Graves
Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.Henrik Ibsen, Norweigen Playwright
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.Jean Cocteau
Any healthy man can go without food for two days - But not without poetry.Charles Baudelaire
Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.Lord Byron
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.Jean Giraudoux
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.Henry David Thoreau
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.Ralph Waldo Emerson
We pass the word around we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry we meditate over the literature we play the music we change our minds we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.Lewis Thomas
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. But, of course, only those we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.Emily Dickinson
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause and say, Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.Martin Luther King Jr.
