Best poetry & literature Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 2

“In poetry, even discourse about doubts must be cast in a discourse that cannot be doubted.”

Poetry Literature Doubt Casts Discourse Doubted

“The 'open text' often emphasizes or foregrounds process, either the process of the original composition or of subsequent compositions by readers.”

Poetry Literature Process Reader Originals Composition Foreground

Book:The Language of Inquiry

Source: The Language of Inquiry

“In description we hear and feel the absorption of the author in the material. We sense the presence of the creator of the scene. .. This personal absorption is what we mean by 'style.' It is strange that we would choose so oddly surfacey a word - style - for this most soulful aspect of writing. We could, perhaps more exactly, call this relation between consciousness and its subject 'integrity.' What else is the articulation of perception?”

Feels Writing Mean Poetry Literature Consciousness Subjects Style Strange Materials Integrity Scene Perception Aspect Relation Creator Description Soulful Absorption Articulation

Author:Patricia Hampl

“At the outset, it is only liking, not understanding, that matters. Gaps in understanding ... are not only important, they are perhaps even welcome, like clearings in the woods, the better to allow the heart's rays to stream out without obstacle. The unlit shadows should remain obscure, which is the very condition of enchantment.”

Should Heart Important Matter Poetry Literature Understanding Conditions Shadow Obstacles Woods Welcome Streams Gaps Rays Obscure Enchantment Clearing

Author:Andre Breton

“The idea that a student can write a sonnet or a novel without having a sound understanding about its history, and where it fits into literature as a whole, seems to me to be manifestly daft.”

Writing Ideas Whole Seems Poetry Literature Understanding Sound Novel Students Fit Sonnet Daft

Author:Nicholas Royle

“Poetry should describe itself, and always be simultaneously poetry and the poetry of poetry.”

Should Poetry Literature

Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“Artistic simplicity is more complex than artistic complexity for it arises via the simplification of the latter and against its backdrop or system.”

Poetry Literature Complexes Simplicity Arise Artistic Complexity Latter Simplification Backdrop

Author:Yuri Lotman

“A statue of Apollo in a museum does not seem naked, but attach a tie to its neck and it will strike us as indecent ... The text is one of the components of an artistic work, albeit an extremely important component ... But the artistic effect as a whole arises from comparisons of the text with a complex set of ontological and ideological esthetic ideas.”

Doe Important Ideas Whole Seems Poetry Literature Effects Complexes Strikes Arise Naked Artistic Ties Necks Comparison Museums Components Statues Apollo Ideological

Author:Yuri Lotman

“To many writers and thinkers, though not to all, another text is, or can be, the most naked and charged of life-forces ... The concept of allusion or analogue is totally inadequate. To Dante these other texts are the organic context of identity. They are as directly about life as life is about them.”

Life Is Poetry Literature Force Identity Concepts Naked Thinker Inadequate Allusion Analogue

Author:George Steiner

“Functions of technical information, historic record, analytic argument, which are integral and obvious to Dante's use of verse are now almost completely a part of the 'prosaic'.”

Use Poetry Literature Records Information Argument Function Obvious Verses Historic Analytics

Author:George Steiner

“The poet's discourse can be compared to the track of a charged particle through a cloud-chamber. An energised field of association and connotation, of overtones and undertones, of rebus and homophone, surround its motion, and break from it in the context of collision .. in Western poetry so much of the charged substance is previous poetry.”

Poetry Literature Break Fields Poet Western Clouds Track Substance Surround Association Discourse Chamber Particles Collision Connotation

Author:George Steiner

“Stopgaps do belong to the internal economy of the form, since the Whole requires them, even if only in a subordinate position ... The stopgap Luigi Paryson's 'zeppa' accepts its own banality, because without the speed that the banal allows up, it would slow up a passage that is crucial for the outcome of the work and its interpretation.”

Ifs Whole Form Poetry Literature Accepting Economy Position Speed Outcomes Internals Interpretation Crucial Passages Subordinates Banality

Author:Umberto Eco

“A particular ikon an aid to devotion may be itself a word of art, but that is logically accidental; its artistic merits will not make it a better ... ikon. They may make it a worse one.”

May Art Poetry Literature Particular Aids Devotion Artistic Merit

Author:C. S. Lewis

“Write, form a rhizome, increase your territory by deterritorialization, extend the line of flight to the point where it becomes an abstract machine covering the entire plane of consistency.”

Writing Form Poetry Literature Lines Machines Increase Flight Planes Abstract Territory Consistency Covering

Book:EPZ Thousand Plateaus

Source: EPZ Thousand Plateaus

“One of the great criticisms of poets of the past is that they said one thing and did another.”

Said Past Poetry Literature One Thing Poet Criticism They Said

Author:Philip Larkin

“These capacities for randomness may have been amplified into human creativity through sexual and social selection.”

Humans May Has Beens Poetry Literature Social Creativity Capacity Selection Randomness

Author:Geoffrey Miller

“I'm afraid I take ... this rather clinical view of love: it's saving you from madness. I'm not so enthusiastic as other poets have been.”

Has Beens Poetry Literature Views Poet Madness Saving Enthusiastic Clinicals

Book:The Complete Poems

Source: The Complete Poems

“If history is a record of survivors, Poetry shelters other voices.”

Ifs Poetry Literature Voice Records Survivor Shelter

Book:The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History

Source: The Birth-mark: Unsettling the Wilderness in American Literary History

“Reality, the oppressor's tongue.”

Reality Poetry Literature Tongue Oppressors

Author:Adrienne Rich

“The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.”

Poetry Literature Speak Water Poet Mark Socialism Socialist Auden Kipling

Author:George Orwell

“Of all human events, perhaps, the publication of a first volume of verses is the most insignificant; but though a matter of no moment to the world, it is still of some concern to the author.”

World Firsts Humans Stills Matter Moments Poetry Literature Events Poet Concern Verses Volume Insignificant Publication

Book:Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville

Source: Published Poems: The Writings of Herman Melville

“Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.”

Trying Hands Poetry Literature Results Poet Late Twenties Nine Poetic Vulgar Late Twenties

Author:Robert Graves

“I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.”

Made Poetry Literature Lost Lines Deals Fire Five Poet Thousand Forgiving Rate Sake Absurd Smoke Righteous Obscurity

Book:Lord Chesterfield's Letters

Source: Lord Chesterfield's Letters

“England still waits for the supreme moment of her literature--for the great poet who shall voice her, or, better still, for the thousand little poets whose voices shall pass into our common talk.”

Littles Stills Moments Poetry Literature Waiting Voice Common Poet Thousand England Supreme Great Poet

Book:Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)

“Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature.”

Poetry Literature Natural Poetry Is Essayists

Author:William Rounseville Alger

“Paraphrase, in the sense of summary, is as indispensable to the novel-critic as close analysis is to the critic of lyric poetry. The natural deduction is that novels are paraphrasable whereas poems are not. But this is a false deduction because close analysis is itself a disguised form of paraphrase.”

Form Poetry Literature Natural Novel Critics Analysis Indispensable Deductions Summary Paraphrase Lyric Poetry

Book:Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel

Source: Language of Fiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Analysis of the English Novel

“We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.”

Has Beens Poetry Literature Black Lines Our Lives Color Racism Censorship

Book:Essays on art, race, politics, and world affairs

Source: Essays on art, race, politics, and world affairs

“Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”

“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.”

Should Writing Doe Soul Poetry Literature Subjects Poetry By Famous Poets

Author:John Keats

“The crown of literature is poetry.”

Poetry Literature Crowns Hygiene

Book:Cakes and Ale

Source: Cakes and Ale

“Always be a poet, even in prose.”

Writing Poetry Literature Poet Prose Poetic

Book:Intimate Journals

Source: Intimate Journals

“With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.”

Poetry Purpose Passion Literature

Book:The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

Source: The Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.”

Writing Poetry Literature Shadow Asking Dance Poetry Is Poetic Echoes Just Dance Inspirational Dance Short Dance Great Poetry

Author:Carl Sandburg

“Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.”

Looks Moments Poetry Literature Doors Leaving Opening Poetry Is Closing Closing Down Closing Up

Author:Carl Sandburg

“I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.”

Poetry Literature Written Poetry Is

Author:Carl Sandburg

“Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”

Poetry Literature Language Poetry Is Poetic Synthesis Biscuits Hyacinths

Author:Carl Sandburg

“Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.”

Men Giving Writing Children Art Poetry Literature Birth Red Pregnancy Pregnant Pregnant Women

Author:Carl Sandburg

“There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.”

Poetry Literature Mystery Logic Prose

Author:Edward Young

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.”

“Modesty, tis a virtue not often found among poets, for almost every one of them thinks himself the greatest in the world.”

Thinking World Poetry Found Literature Virtue Poet Modesty

Author:Miguel de Cervantes

“The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes.”

Mind Humans Ends Poetry Literature Steps Poet Activity Achievement Aim Prose Human Mind Crowns Delicacy

Author:W. Somerset Maugham

“The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”

“Children read to learn - even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries - it is all new to them.”

“Literature is the question minus the answer.”

Art Poetry Literature Answers Healing Teens Minus World Literature

Author:Roland Barthes

“Everyone thinks they're going to write one book of poems or one novel.”

Thinking Writing Book Poetry Literature Novel

Author:Marilyn Hacker

“I think that there are empty ecological niches in the literary landscape crying to be filled and when a book more or less fills a niche it's seized on, even when it's a far from perfect fit...”

Thinking Book Poetry Literature Perfect Cry Fit Empty Filled Landscape Niche Ecological Perfect Fit

Author:Edmund White

“The cliché is dead poetry. English, being the language of an imaginative race, abounds in clichés, so that English literature is always in danger of being poisoned by its own secretions.”

Poetry Literature Language Race Danger Imaginative English Literature

Author:Gerald Brenan

“Ultimately I have learned more about poetry, from music and magic than from literature.”

Poetry Literature Magic I Have Learned

Book:Special deliveries: new and selected poems

Source: Special deliveries: new and selected poems

“If a poet has any obligation toward society, it is to write well. Being in the minority, he has no other choice. Failing this duty, he sinks into oblivion. Society, on the other hand, has no obligation toward the poet. A majority by definition, society thinks of itself as having other options than reading verses, no matter how well written. Its failure to do so results in its sinking to that level of locution at which society falls easy prey to a demagogue or a tyrant. This is society's own equivalent of oblivion.”

“I got $30 from Nation magazine for a poem and $500 for my first book of poems.”

Firsts Book Poetry Literature Nations Magazines

Author:Jim Harrison

Poetry Quotes

Related topics

Poetry Quotes