Poetry Quotes

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She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir.

Charles Dickens

Lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources - The Bible, Homer, Shakespeare.... The Bible before the Iliad, the Iliad before Shakespeare.

"They wanted to come in after the pounds", explained Pooh, "so I let them. It's the best way to write poetry, letting things come".

I am one of those who hold that poetry is never so blithe as in a wanton and irregular subject.

Michel de Montaigne

Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory...

Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.

Henry David Thoreau

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

Friedrich Nietzsche

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively, but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

Henry David Thoreau

I have been used to consider poetry as "the food of love" said Darcy. "Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction?

She ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry; and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of poetry.

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

And truly Philosophy is but sophisticated poetry. Whence do those ancient writers derive all their authority but from the poets?

Michel de Montaigne

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The incalculable winds of fantasy and music and poetry, the mere face of a girl, the song of a bird, or the sight of a horizon, are always blowing evil's whole structure away.

Men are what their mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves huckabuck why it does not make cashmere as to expect poetry from this engineer or a chemical discovery from that jobber.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Professionally he declines and falls, and as a friend he drops into poetry.

Charles Dickens

Those ancients who in poetry presented the golden age, who sang its happy state, perhaps, in their Parnassus, dreamt this place. Here, mankind's root was innocent; and here were every fruit and never-ending spring; these streams—the nectar of which poets sing.

Dante Alighieri

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize

The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement.

A man should have a farm or a mechanical craft for his culture. We must have a basis for our higher accomplishments, our delicate entertainments of poetry and philosophy, in the work of our hands.

Ralph Waldo Emerson