I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Pablo NerudaSome people go to priests, others to poetry, I to my friends.
Virginia WoolfAt the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.
PlatoI have been used to consider poetry as the food of love.
Jane AustenFor what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
Kahlil GibranMaidens like moths are ever caught by glare, And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.
Lord ByronSome good, some so-so and lots plain bad: that's how a book of poems is made, my friend
Marcus AureliusPound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.
Ernest HemingwayPoetry is the art of substantiating shadows and of lending existence to nothing.
Edmund BurkeGood night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good night till it be morrow.
William ShakespeareNot to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk at least before they dance.
Alexander PopeTeach you children poetry, it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.
Walter ScottOh! too convincing - dangerously dear - In woman's eye the unanswerable tear!
Lord ByronEducation forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.
Alexander PopeThen stirs the feeling infinite so felt, In solitude where we are least alone.
Lord ByronLet none think to fly the danger, for soon or late love is his own avenger.
Lord ByronHow happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Alexander PopeLift up your eyes upon. This day breaking for you. Give birth again. To the dream.
Maya AngelouBehold the child, by Nature's kindly law pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw.
Alexander PopeI'll publish right or wrong: Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.
Lord ByronTo fly from need not be to hate mankind: All are not fit with them to stir and toil, Nor is it discontent to keep the mind, Deep in its fountain.
Lord ByronI give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven's gate, Built in Jerusalem's wall.
William BlakeI heard an Angel singing, When the day was springing, "Mercy, Pity, Peace, Is the world's release."
William BlakeHe who binds to himself a joy, Does the winged life destroy, But he who kisses the joy as it flies, Lives in eternity's sunrise.
William BlakeThe poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things and far below the musician in that of invisible things.
Leonardo da VinciIf I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me I know that is poetry.
Emily DickinsonEach morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close, Something attempted, something done has earned a night's repose.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowAnd I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs, Every child may joy to hear.
William BlakeFondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.
Alexander PopeFor pleasures past I do not grieve nor perils gathering near, My greatest grief is that I leave nothing that claims a tear.
Lord ByronWives in their husbands' absences grow subtler, and daughters sometimes run off with the butler.
Lord ByronInvention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.
William CongrevePiping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child.
William BlakeTrust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend, and every foe.
Alexander PopePoetry is an echo asking a shadow to dance.
Carl SandburgHope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is but always to be blest.
Alexander PopeSeek Love in the pity of others' woe, In the gentle relief of another's care, In the darkness of night and the winter's snow, In the naked and outcast seek Love there!
William BlakePoetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
Kahlil GibranIn solitude where we are least alone.
Lord ByronThe memory of joy is no longer joy, the memory of pain is pain still.
Lord ByronBut he with first a start and then a wink, Said 'There's another star gone out I think!'
Lord ByronWhen the stars threw down their spears, And watered heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
William BlakeBut are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?
H. P. LovecraftDeep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.
Edgar Allan PoeFor the Eye altering alters all, The Senses roll themselves in fear, And the flat Earth becomes a Ball.
William BlakeMy life has been one great big joke, a dance that's walked, a song that's spoke. I laugh so hard I almost choke when I think about myself.
Maya AngelouA hungry wolf at all the herd will run, In hopes through many to make sure of one.
William CongrevePoetry is finer and more philosophical than history, for poetry expresses the universal and history only the particular.
AristotleOf all the horrid hideous notes of woe, Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, Is that portentous phrase 'I told you so'.
Lord ByronThe poor dog, in life the firmest friend, the first to welcome, foremost to defend.
Lord ByronA poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Robert FrostFor this reason poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history.
AristotleThe pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
William BlakeThere is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away, nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.
Emily DickinsonShe likes herself, yet others hates, For that which in herself she prizes, And while she laughs at them forgets, She is the thing that she despises.
William CongreveNobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me: I am cruelly used, nobody feels for my poor nerves.
Jane AustenI try to live what I consider a "poetic existence." That means I take responsibility for the air I breathe and the space I take up. I try to be immediate to be totally present for all my work.
Maya AngelouI have mental joys and mental health, Mental friends and mental wealth, I've a wife that I love and that loves me, I've all but riches bodily.
William BlakeHappy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.
Alexander PopeThe Angel that presided o'er my birth / Said Little creature formed of joy and mirth / Go love without the help of anything on earth.'
William BlakeDeath most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land, or a poet who is a stranger among his people.
Kahlil GibranTo a poet silence is an acceptable response, even a flattering one.
Sidonie Gabrielle ColetteIf we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.
Honore de BalzacPoetry 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. EliotAll Heaven and Earth are still, though not in sleep, But breathless as we grow when feeling most.
Lord ByronWhen I was writing pretty poor poetry this girl with midnight black hair told me to go on.
Carl SandburgAll human history attests, That happiness for man - the hungry sinner! Since Eve ate apples much depends on dinner.
Lord ByronWhenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography history or science it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or place. Furthermore it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd.
Joseph CampbellEvery age has its own poetry, in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.
Jean-Paul SartreMy mother groaned, my father wept, into the dangerous world I leapt, helpless naked piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud.
William BlakeI, by no means, rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence - this may look like affectation, but it is my real opinion. It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.
Lord ByronPoetry should help not only to refine the language of the time but to prevent it from changing too rapidly.
T. S. EliotPersonality is everything in art and poetry.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheGenuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
T. S. EliotThe dogs did bark, the children screamed, Up flew the windows all; And every soul bawled out, Well done! As loud as he could bawl.
William CowperWith only half a lip you kiss, And half of that I ne'er' should miss, A greater boon of worth untold, Wilt grant me? That whole half withhold.
Marcus AureliusPoetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
Edgar Allan PoeWith me poetry has not been a purpose but a passion.
Edgar Allan PoeAll I saw farther in the last confusion, Was that King George slipped into heaven for one, And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, I left him practising the hundredth psalm.
Lord ByronPoetry has done enough when it charms but prose must also convince.
H. L. MenckenThe reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell is because he was a true poet, and of the Devil's party without knowing it.
William BlakeYou may send poetry to the rich, to poor men give substantial presents
Marcus AureliusClime of the unforgotten brave! Whose land from plain to mountain-cave, Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave!
Lord ByronOnce I planned to write a book of poems entirely about the things in my pocket. But I found it would be too long, and the age of the great epics is past.
Gilbert K. ChestertonWhen 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.
John F. KennedyA poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar WildePoetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Robert FrostWhy should poetry have to make sense?
Charlie ChaplinPoetry is what gets lost in translation.
Robert FrostI have met with most poetry on trunks, so that I am pat to consider the trunk-maker as the sexton of authorship.
Lord ByronPoetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Carl SandburgWe make out of the quarrel with others rhetoric but of the quarrel with ourselves poetry.
William Butler YeatsIt is written on the arched sky, it looks out from every star. It is the poetry of Nature, it is that which uplifts the spirit within us.
John RuskinPainting is silent poetry and poetry is painting that speaks.
PlutarchShe walks in beauty like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that's best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes.
Lord ByronIt's not easy to define poetry.
Bob DylanLove is the poetry of the senses.
Honore de BalzacThe business of the poet is not to find new emotions but to use the ordinary ones and in working them up into poetry to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all.
T. S. EliotFor awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.
F. Scott FitzgeraldEverything one invents is true you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert`Father O father! what do we here, In this land of unbelief and fear? The Land of Dreams is better far, Above the light of the morning star.
William BlakePoetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.
Robert FrostPoetry is something to make us wiser and better by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men's souls.
James Russell LowellPoetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry cannot have much respect for himself or for anything else.
William HazlittThe lunatic, the lover, and the poet are of imagination all compact.
William ShakespeareO Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover, The thought that I was not unworthy to love her.
Lord ByronPoetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
Carl SandburgWhen it comes to atoms language can be used only as in poetry. The poet too is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.
Niels BohrHumility is only doubt, And does the sun and moon blot out.
William BlakeI don't think I've ever read poetry ever.
EminemYou will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Joseph JoubertYet it is true poetry is delicious, the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.
Virginia WoolfPoetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.
William WordsworthI tell thee be not rash, a golden bridge Is for a flying enemy.
Lord ByronI'm sorry man but I've got magic. I've got poetry in my fingertips. Most of the time - and this includes naps - I'm an F-18 bro. And I will destroy you in the air. I will deploy my ordinance to the ground.
Charlie SheenBut Shakespeare also says 'tis very silly / `To gild refined gold or paint the lily'.
Lord ByronO solitude where are the charms, That sages have seen in thy face? Better dwell in the midst of alarms, Than reign in this horrible place.
William CowperPoetry is as precise a thing as geometry.
Gustave FlaubertListen real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.
Jim MorrisonPoetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history since its statements are of nature of universals, whereas those of history are of singulars.
AristotlePoetry 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 KeatsThe sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.
E. M. ForsterThe Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeathed the name of Washington, To make man blush there was but one!
Lord ByronPoetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts and appear almost a remembrance.
John KeatsPoetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
Robert FrostYou will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Joseph JoubertPoetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being to which we rarely penetrate, for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
T. S. EliotThe drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ, it contains both of them in a state of high development and epitomizes both.
Victor HugoPoetry is more philosophical and of higher value than history.
AristotleThough they did not kiss, Yet still between his Darkness and his Brightness, There passed a mutual glance of great politeness.
Lord ByronRhyme that enslaved queen that supreme charm of our poetry that creator of our meter.
Victor HugoPure mathematics is in its way the poetry of logical ideas.
Albert EinsteinAnd we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.
William BlakePoetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.
Gertrude SteinOne merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
VoltairePoetry is the opening and closing of a door leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.
Carl SandburgPoetry should only occupy the idle.
Lord ByronAll bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.
Oscar WildeThere is another old poet, whose name I do not now remember, who said "Truth is the daughter of Time."
Abraham LincolnThe Bible should be taught but emphatically not as reality. It is fiction myth poetry anything but reality. As such it needs to be taught because it underlies so much of our literature and our culture.
Richard DawkinsIf I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off I know that is poetry.
Emily DickinsonI've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
Carl SandburgPoetry surrounds us everywhere but putting it on paper is alas not so easy as looking at it.
Vincent Van GoghThe stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter and the crush of worlds.
Joseph AddisonAll one's inventions are true you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
Gustave FlaubertNobody I think ought to read poetry or look at pictures or statues who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
Nathaniel HawthorneBuild today then strong and sure, With a firm and ample base, And ascending and secure. Shall tomorrow find its place.
Henry Wadsworth LongfellowI think that there is nothing not even crime more opposed to poetry to philosophy ay to life itself than this incessant business.
Henry David ThoreauPoetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Samuel JohnsonThe poetry of the earth is never dead.
John KeatsWhen love beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
Kahlil GibranIn the television age the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.
Richard M. NixonPoetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
PlatoIf my poetry aims to achieve anything it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
Jim MorrisonThe crown of literature is poetry.
W. Somerset MaughamAs things are and as fundamentally they must always be poetry is not a career but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
T. S. EliotMy favourite poem is the one that starts 'Thirty days hath September' because it actually tells you something.
Groucho MarxBring me my bow of burning gold! Bring me my arrows of desire! Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold! Bring me my chariot of fire!
William BlakeThe greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world... to see clearly is poetry prophecy and religion all in one.
John RuskinPoetry fettered fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry painting and music are destroyed or flourish.
William BlakeAdieu adieu! my native shore, Fades o'er the waters blue.
Lord ByronWine is bottled poetry.
Robert Louis StevensonPoetry 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.
John KeatsSuperstition is the poetry of life.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheEvery now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.
J. K. RowlingThe true spirit of delight the exaltation the sense of being more than Man which is the touchstone of the highest excellence is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
Bertrand RussellPoetry is all that is worth remembering in life.
William HazlittAll slang is metaphor and all metaphor is poetry.
Gilbert K. ChestertonI would define in brief the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.
Edgar Allan PoeYe stars! which are the poetry of heaven!
Lord ByronWandering in many a coral grove / Fair Nine forsaking Poetry!
William BlakeCome away O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
William Butler YeatsTo see clearly is poetry prophecy and religion all in one.
John RuskinI decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry but a kind of instinct or inspiration such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
SocratesWe read Robert Browning's poetry. Here we needed no guidance from the professor: the poems themselves were enough.
Carl SandburgWhen at last we are sure, You've been properly pilled, Then a few paper forms, Must be properly filled. So that you and your heirs, May be properly billed.
Dr. SeussScience arose from poetry... when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheMan being reasonable must get drunk, The best of life is but intoxication, Glory the grape, love gold - in these are sunk - The hopes of all men and of every nation.
Lord Byron