Home / Topics / Poetry Quotes

Poetry Quotes

Browse 12091 quotes about Poetry.

Poetry Quotes

“Why do you always write poetry? Why do you not write prose? Prose is so much more difficult.”

Writing Poetry Difficult Prose

Author:Walter Pater

“It is very difficult to pass from pleasure to work. Accordingly more poems have been swallowed up by sorrow than ever happiness caused to blaze forth in unparalleled radiance.”

Has Beens Poetry Difficult Pleasure Sorrow Radiance

Author:Honore de Balzac

“The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it.”

Reason Poetry Difficult Wife Modern Poet Poetry Is Modern Poetry

Author:Wendy Cope

“The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.”

Ifs Thinking Knows World Humans Art Poetry Certain Difficult Moral Awareness Art Is Function Primaries Efficient Deceiving

Author:W. H. Auden

“It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.”

Men Poetry Dies Found Difficult News

Author:William Carlos Williams

“Poetry, even that of the loftiest, and seemingly, that of the wildest odes, [has] a logic of its own as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets... there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word.”

Reason Poetry Causes Difficult Position Poet Logic Complexes Dependent Subtle Severe Great Poet Fugitive Odes

Book:Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions

Source: Biographia Literaria, Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions

“All poetry is difficult to read - The sense of it anyhow.”

Poetry Difficult Difficulty Poetry Is

Book:Poems

Source: Poems