Poetry quotes
987 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"If I could take your troubles I would toss them into the sea, But all these things I'm finding Are impossible for me. I cannot build a mountain Or catch a rainbow fair, But let me be what I know best, A friend that is always there."
"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."
"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words."
"Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits."
"It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside poetry — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love"
"Poetry 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."
"Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes."
"There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it"
"Whatever is not stone is light"
"In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was proud, triumphant. So it has been from the very start, never finding peace with itself, always doubting the worth of what it makes."
"The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in."
"They swayed about upon a rocking horse, And thought it Pegasus."
"I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman."
"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."
"To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears."
"You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and 'load every rift' of your subject with ore."
"Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared."
"Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it."
"I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering."
"Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically."
"A poet is a combination of an instrument and a human being in one person, with the former gradually taking over the latter. The sensation of this takeover is responsible for timbre; the realization of it, for destiny."
"Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks."
"Each word bears its weight, so you have to read my poems quite slowly."
"Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation."
