Poetry Quotes by Famous Poets
Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul,
and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject
– John Keats
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been there before me.
– Sigmund Freud
Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind,
because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.
– Sigmund Freud
A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no identity;
he is continually informing and filling some other body
– Keats Quote / Quotation
God is the perfect poet,
Who in his person acts his own creations.
– Robert Browning
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge
– William Wordsworth Quote / Quotation
Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand
– Plato
The audience for social poetry is here and waiting on poetry speaking to the new
evolving political rhythms of our existence, divorced of obscure references,
mythic Greek figures and greeting card mush
– Mark Antony Rossi Quote / Quotation
No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound
philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge,
human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object
that does honor to the language in whichit is written.
Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but
perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said
before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves
– W. H. Auden Quote / Quotation
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, and tell them: and the truth of truths
is love
– Philip James Bailey Quote / Quotation
A man would do well to carry a pencil in his pocket and write down the thoughts
of the moment.Those that come unsought are commonly the
most valuable and should be secured, they seldom return
– Francis Bacon
Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash
– Leonard Cohen Quote / Quotation
There is a pleasure in poetic pains which only poets know
– William Cowper
Not every poem’s good because it’s ancient, Nor mayst thou blame it just because
it’s new, Fair critics test, and prove, and so pass judgment; Fools praise or blame
as they hear others do.
– Buddhist Quote / Quotation
Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful
– Rita Dove Quote / Quotation
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood
-T. S. Eliot
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason
– Novalis Quote / Quotation
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
A poem is never finished, only abandoned
– Paul Valery
A poet is a bird of unearthly excellence, who escapes from his celestial realm
arrives in this world warbling.If we do not cherish him, he spreads his wings
and flies back into his homeland.
– Kahlil Gibran Quote / Quotation
Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal
which the reader recognizes as his own
– Salvatore Quasimodo
To have great poets, there must be great audiences
– Walt Whitman Quote / Quotation
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words
– Robert Frost
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom
– Robert Frost Quote / Quotation
You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you
– Joseph Joubert
Poetry should… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts,
and appear almost a remembrance
– John Keats
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits
– Carl Sandburg Quote / Quotation
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance
– Carl Sandburg
There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either
– Robert Graves Quote / Quotation
Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn
– Thomas Gray
To have great poets, there must be great audiences
– Walt Whitman Quote / Quotation
To be a poet is a condition, not a profession
– Robert Frost
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else.
A poem points to nothing but itself
– E. M. Forster Quote / Quotation
The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth
– Samuel Johnson
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the
Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo
– Don Marquis Quote / Quotation
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 who have personality and emotions know
what it means to want to escape from these things
– T. S. Eliot
Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition
– Eli Khamarov Quote / Quotation
It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by
creating silences around things
– Stephen Mallarme
Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.
Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the
unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how
rainbows are made and why they go away
– Carl Sandburg Quote / Quotation
A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides,
start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep
– Salman Rushdie
A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty,
but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring
– E. B. White Quote / Quotation
A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings,
but whose lips are so strangely formed thatwhen the sighs and the cries
escape them, they sound like beautiful music…and then people crowd
about the poet and say to him: “Sing for us soon again;”
that is asmuch as to say, “May new sufferings torment your soul”
– Soren Kierkegaard
A poet can survive everything but a misprint
– Oscar Wilde
You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick…
You’re back with the mystery of having been moved by words.
The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps…
so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in
– Dylan Thomas Quote / Quotation
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved
and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words
– Paul Engle
A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses
– Jean Cocteau