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Poetry Quotes

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Poetry Quotes

“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

“It may be safely affirmed that there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.... They both speak by and to the same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; Poetry sheds no tears "such as Angels weep," but natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial ichor that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both.”

“You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.”

“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 difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemotional deadness of his academic prose; and is always coining newer, deader words with a natural preference for Greek formations. The poet avoids the entire vocabulary of logic unless for satiric purposes, and treats words as living creatures with a preference for those with long emotional histories dating from mediaeval times. Poetry at its purest is, indeed, a defiance of logic.”

Source: Some speculations on literature, history, and religion

“Poetry is the most direct and simple means of expressing oneself in words: the most primitive nations have poetry, but only quitewell developed civilizations can produce good prose. So don't think of poetry as a perverse and unnatural way of distorting ordinary prose statements: prose is a much less natural way of speaking than poetry is. If you listen to small children, and to the amount of chanting and singsong in their speech, you'll see what I mean.”

“Why must ancients, and provided the same talent, be better than modern authors? Free to exploit the vast realm of the simpleand the natural, they did not have to be artificial in order to be original (which every artist aspires to be).”

Art Poetry Artist Order Natural Modern Talent Poet Originals Realms Artificial Aspire Exploits

Author:Franz Grillparzer

“Where philosophy ends, poetry must commence. There should not be a common point of view, a natural manner of thinking which standsin contrast to art and liberal education, or mere living; that is, one should not conceive of a realm of crudeness beyond the boundaries of education. Every conscious link of an organism should not perceive its limits without a feeling for its unity in relation to the whole. For example, philosophy should not only be contrasted to non-philosophy, but also to poetry.”

“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

“The poetry of the earth is never dead.”

“The field is a halfway house, halfway between the detail of those intimately known places and the ignorance of a landscape view ... The essence of a field is that the cultural accommodates the natural there. The human being makes room for and makes use of those organisms that are not him. In that way the field is a poem to symbiosis, and a human contract with the natural.”

Way Humans Use Earth Poetry House Natural Human Beings Rooms Views Known Fields Ignorance Essence Details Landscape Contracts Organisms Halfway Accommodate Symbiosis

Author:Adam Nicolson

“We believe we can also show that words do not have exactly the same psychic "weight" depending on whether they belong to the language of reverie or to the language of daylight life-to rested language or language under surveillance-to the language of natural poetry or to the language hammered out by authoritarian prosodies.”

Believe Shows Poetry Language Natural Weight Psychics Surveillance Daylight Reverie Hammered Prosody

Author:Gaston Bachelard

“Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.”

Way Persons Poetry Certain Natural Memories Forget Particular Poet Genius Originals Impression Poetic Never Forget Freshness Natural Gifts

Author:Stephen Spender