Poetry quotes
987 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside poetry — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit - "le suggérer, voilà le rêve!")."
"My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne."
"Poetry is a mug's game."
"Till Human voices wake us, and we drown."
"poets are privileged to utter more than they can always quite explain, bringing up from the mind's unplumbed depths tokens of the nature of the world we carry within us."
"For, whom the Muses smile upon, And touch with soft persuasion, His words like a storm-wind can bring Terror and beauty on their wing; In his every syllable Lurketh nature veritable."
"The finest poetry was first experience."
"Only that is poetry which cleanses and mans me."
"For this present, hard Is the fortune of the bard, Born out of time; All his accomplishment, From Nature's utmost treasure spent, Booteth not him."
"There is, in all great poets, a wisdom of humanity which is superior to any talents they exercise."
"Men consort in camp and town But the poet dwells alone."
"The rhyme of the poet Modulates the king's affairs."
"And of poetry, the success is not attained when it lulls and satisfies, but when it astonishes and fires us with new endeavours after the unattainable."
"Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not in the encyclopedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play."
"The true poem is the poet's mind."
"The end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing."
"Sir, what is poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is; but it is not easy to tell what it is."
"Each man has his own batch of poems."
"Poetry, therefore, we will call Musical Thought."
"All poetry is difficult to read - The sense of it anyhow."
