Poetry Quotes
Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.Lord Byron
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.Plato
Through and through the world is infested with quantity. To talk sense is to talk quantities, It is no use saying the nation is large - How large? It is no use s aying that radium is scarce - How scarce? You can not evade quantity. You may fly to poetry and music and quantity and number will face you in your rhythms and your octaves.Alfred North Whitehead
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.John Adams
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.Robert Frost
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.
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
We have more poets thatnjudges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem that to understand a good one.Michel de Montaigne
A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.Thomas Carlyle
The greatest poem is not that which is most skillfully constructed, but that in which there is the most poetry.L. Schefe
Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.Henrik Ibsen, Norweigen Playwright
Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.Adrian Mitchell
Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine arts; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest to reach true perfection.E. C. Stedman
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
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is prose words in their best order - Poetry the best words in the best order.Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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.
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
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.William Wordsworth
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.Charles Simic
Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko
Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense at all events just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least.Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.T. S. Eliot
Thinking in its lower grades, is comparable to paper money, and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.Havelock Ellis
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.Jean Cocteau
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
There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either.Robert Graves
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
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.Christopher Fry
It is written on the arched sky It looks out from every star It is the poetry of Nature It is that which uplifts the spirit within us.John Ruskin
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)
