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Poetry Quotes

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Poetry Quotes

“Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form.”

Men May Form Joy Desire Poetry Sorrow Infinity August Persephone

Book:A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

“Not gods, nor men, nor even booksellers have put up with poets' being second-rate.”

Men Poetry Poet Rate Second Rate Booksellers

Author:Horace

“Writing poetry, we live among the wild beasts, and when we touch a man, the stuff of someone in whom we believed, and he goes to pieces like a rotten pie, you... gather together whatever can be salvaged, while I cup my hands around the live coal of life.”

Men Writing Hands Together Poetry Stuff Pieces Cups Beast Pie Coal Rotten Writing Poetry Wild Beasts

Book:Windows that open inward: images of Chile

Source: Windows that open inward: images of Chile

“Poetry is to a painting what life is to man.”

Men Life Is Poetry Painting Poetry Is

Book:Georges Braque, 1882-1963: An American Tribute

Source: Georges Braque, 1882-1963: An American Tribute

“Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.”

Men Poetry Poet Mediocrity Booksellers

Author:Horace

“A poet must have died as a man before he is worth anything as a poet.”

Men Poetry Poet Died

Author:Christian Morgenstern

“Kierkegaard was once asked, 'What is a poet?' He answered that a poet was an unhappy man whose moans and cries of anguish were transformed into ravishing music.”

Men Poetry Cry Poet Unhappy Transformed Anguish

Author:Langdon Brown Gilkey

“Men of real talents in Arms have commonly approved themselves patrons of the liberal arts and friends to the poets, of their own as well as former times. In some instances by acting reciprocally, heroes have made poets, and poets heroes.”

Men Wells Art Made Real Poetry Acting Talent Poet Arms Hero Instance Former Approved Patron Liberal Arts Real Talent

Book:George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War

Source: George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War

“Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.”

Men Poetry Heaven Saws Pride Pierce

Book:The poetical works of James Russell Lowell

Source: The poetical works of James Russell Lowell

“the ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes”

Men Mind Art Two Poetry Fall Poet Ordinary Cooking Falling In Love Smell Noise Chaotic Typewriters Ordinary Man Spinoza

Book:The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays

Source: The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays

“A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.”

Men Poetry Stars Poet Climbs Ladders Violin

Author:Edmond de Goncourt

“Poetry is the attempt which man makes to render his existence harmonious.”

Men Poetry Existence Poetry Is Harmonious

Book:Critical & Miscellaneous Essays: Collected & Republished

Source: Critical & Miscellaneous Essays: Collected & Republished

“There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man.”

Men World Poetry Bottom Heroic Biographies

Author:Thomas Carlyle

“Poetry interprets in two ways: it interprets by expressing, with magical felicity, the physiognomy and movements of the outward world; and it interprets by expressing, with inspired conviction, the ideas and laws of the inward world of man's moral and spiritual nature. In other words, poetry is interpretative both by having natural magic in it, and by having moral profundity.”

Men World Way Two Ideas Spiritual Law Poetry Natural Moral Magic Movement Inspired Conviction Poetry Is Inward Two Ways Felicity Profundity Spiritual Nature Physiognomy

Book:Essays in Criticism

Source: Essays in Criticism

“Lives there the man with soul so dead as to disown the wish to merit the people's applause, and having uttered words worthy to be kept in cedar oil to latest times, to leave behind him rhymes that dread neither herrings nor frankincense.”

People Men Soul Poetry Wish Behinds He Man Worthy Oil Merit Dread Rhyme Applause Cedars Herring Time To Leave Frankincense

Author:Aulus Persius Flaccus

“True poetry, like the religious prompting itself, springs from the emotional side of a man's complex nature, and is ever in harmony with his highest intuitions and aspirations.”

Men Poetry Sides Religious Emotional Highest Spring Harmony Complexes Intuition Aspiration

Author:Epes Sargent

“Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day, or Warren's blackin' or Rowland's oil, or some o' them low fellows; never you let yourself down to talk poetry, my boy.”

Men Funny Poetry Boys Poet Lows Humorous Fellows Oil My Boys

Author:Charles Dickens

“The poet presents the imagination with images from life and human characters and situations, sets them all in motion and leaves itto the beholder to let these images take his thoughts as far as his mental powers will permit. This is why he is able to engage men of the most differing capabilities, indeed fools and sages together. The philosopher, on the other hand, presents not life itself but the finished thoughts which he has abstracted from it and then demands that the reader should think precisely as, and precisely as far as, he himself thinks. That is why his public is so small.”

“Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.”

Men May Moving Poetry Social Effort Produce Poet Needed Prison Reform Prose Nerves Peers Melodrama Faust Prison Reform

Author:George Bernard Shaw

“All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbor knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way?”

People Thinking Knows Men Way Poetry Walks Lord He Man Poet Neighbor Gossip Academia

Author:William Butler Yeats

“For the poets tell us, don't they, that the melodies they bring us are gathered from rills that run with honey, out of glens and gardens of the Muses, and they bring them as bees do honey, flying like the bees? And what they say is true, for a poet is a light and winged thing, and holy, and never able to compose until he has become inspired, and is beside himself, and reason is no longer in him. So long as he has this in his possession, no man is able to make poetry or to chant in prophecy.”

Men Inspirational Long Reason Light Running Able Poetry Poet Holy Garden Madness Inspired Possession Flying Melody Honey Bees Muse Prophecy

Book:The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including The Letters

Source: The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including The Letters

“I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide And find Ianthe's name agen.”

Men Poetry Names Written Poet Ocean Wide Tides Unborn

Book:Heroic idyls, with additional poems

Source: Heroic idyls, with additional poems

“The man who invented Eskimo Pie made a million dollars, so one is told, but E.E. Cummings, whose verse has been appearing off andon for three years now, and whose experiments should not be more appalling to those interested in poetry than the experiment of surrounding ice-cream with a layer of chocolate was to those interested in soda fountains, has hardly made a dent in the doughy minds of our so-called poetry lovers.”

“I envy no man's nightingale or spring; Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme, Who plainly say, My God, My King.”

Men Poetry Loss Poet Kings Spring Envy Rhyme Nightingales

Book:The poetical works of George Herbert

Source: The poetical works of George Herbert

“The one man who should never attempt an explanation of a poem is its author. If the poem can be improved by it's author's explanations it never should have been published, and if the poem cannot be improved by its author's explanations the explanations are scarcely worth reading.”

Ifs Men Should Has Beens Poetry Reading Should Have Explanation One Man Should Have Been Worth Reading

Author:Archibald MacLeish

“In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.”

Men Poetry Natural Principles Youth Revolution Periods Daughter France Abandoned Adopted Bad Man French Revolution Wordsworth Good Poetry

Book:Sceptical Essays

Source: Sceptical Essays

“The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It is not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret for us, who makes us participate in their life; it is Shakspeare [sic] … Wordsworth … Keats … Chateaubriand … Senancour.”

Men Giving Whole Poetry Water Animal Secret Objects Plant Appeals Intimate Faculty Interpretation Wordsworth Linnaeus

Book:Essays in Criticism

Source: Essays in Criticism

“Printed prose is historically a most peculiar, almost an aberrant way of telling stories, and by far the most inherently anesthetic: It is the only medium of art I can think of which appeals directly to none of our five senses. The oral and folk tradition in narrative made use of verse or live-voice dynamics, embellished by gesture and expression--a kind of rudimentary theater--as do the best raconteurs of all times. Commonly there was musical accompaniment as well: a kind of one-man theater-of-mixed-means.”

Source: The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction

“Gascoigne, Ben Jonson, Greville, Raleigh, Donne, Poets who wrote great poems, one by one, And spaced by many years, each line an act Through which few labor, which no men retract. This passion is the scholar's heritage”

Men Years Poetry Passion Lines Poet Labor Heritage Scholar Donne Raleigh

Book:Collected Poems

Source: Collected Poems

“A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.”

Men Should Wisdom Poetry Wise Poet Excellence Apex

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“The poet who speaks out of the deepest instincts of man will be heard. The poet who creates a myth beyond the power of man to realize is gagged at the peril of the group that binds him. He is the true revolutionary: he builds a new world.”

Men World Poetry Speak Realizing Heard Groups Poet Instinct Myth Revolutionary New World Peril Speaks Out

Author:Babette Deutsch

“We have more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine poesy is equally above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it with the most assured and most steady sight sees no more than the quick reflection of a flash of lightning.”

Source: Works, Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy: With Notes from All the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical Notices &c., &c

“Just as a child is really a thing that wants to become a man, so is the poem an object of nature that wants to become an object ofart.”

Men Want Children Poetry Objects Poet

Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“Poetry is the sister of Sorrow. Every man that suffers and weeps is a poet; every tear is a verse, and every heart a poem.”

Men Heart Poetry Suffering Tears Poet Sorrow Every Man Poetry Is Verses

Author:Marc-Andre Fleury

“I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition. In science you want to say something that nobody knew before, in words which everyone can understand. In poetry you are bound to say ... something that everyone knows already in words that nobody can understand. Commenting to him about the poetry J. Robert Oppenheimer wrote.”

Knows Men Want Writing Poetry Bounds Physics Opposition Frontiers

Author:Paul Dirac

“There is no man more complete than the one who travelled a lot, who changed the shape of his thoughts and his life twenty times.”

Men Life Poetry Change Changed Politician Shapes Travel Twenties Life Experience Completeness

Author:Alphonse de Lamartine

“Most joyful let the Poet be, it is through him that all men see.”

Men Poetry Poet Joyful

Book:Poems

Source: Poems

“When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.”

Men Poetry Existence Power Diversity Areas Concern Limitation Arrogance Patriotic Richness Power Corrupts

Author:John F. Kennedy

“Every healthy man can do without food for two days — but without poetry, never!”

Men Two Poetry Food Healthy Cooking Culinary Poetic Two Days

Author:Charles Baudelaire

“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

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”

Men World Way Writing Looks Poetry Poet Poetic Housework

Author:Wallace Stevens

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.”

Men Poetry Pleasure Sea Rivers Sacred Ran Decree Domes Great Poetry Caverns

Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“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

“Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.”

Men Moving Poetry Teach Deserve Verses

Book:The Portable Voltaire

Source: The Portable Voltaire

“The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.”

Men Littles Poetry Capacity Myth Meaningful Poetry Is Meaningful Life Great Poetry

Author:Robert Penn Warren

“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.”

Men Mind Made Poetry Knowledge Poet Masters Drink Ordinary Streams Ordinary Man Poetry By Famous Poets

Author:Sigmund Freud

“Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is.”

Men Poetry Rebellion Poetry Is Uprising What Is Poetry

Author:James Branch Cabell

“Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young.”

Men Soul Young Poetry Poet Died Carrie Inner Child Die Young

Author:Antoine de Saint-Exupery

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”

Men Poetry Time Poet Profound Philosopher Great Poet Great Poetry Poetry By Famous Poets

Author:Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.”

Men Poetry Language Poetry Is Amazement Predicaments Great Poetry Prose And Poetry

Book:The Early Days

Source: The Early Days