Great Poetry Quotes

• Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

  Stephen Spender

  Poetry, Great Poet, Can Do

  The New York Times, March 26, 1961.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Beauty, Thoughtful, Poetry

  "The Poetic Principle". Essay by Edgar Allan Poe, 1850.

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Poetry, Uniting

  Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.120

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

  Robert Frost

  Poetry, Emotion, Found

  112 Copy quote

• Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

  Robert Frost

  Fire, Ice, Poetry

  "Fire and Ice" l. 1 (1923)

  30 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

  Khalil Gibran

  Pain, Reading Poetry, Joy

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

  85 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

  Thomas Gray

  Poetry, Poetic, Breathe

  'The Progress of Poesy' (1757) l. 110

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

  Joseph Joubert

  Poetry, Poetic

  17 Copy quote

• Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

  Novalis

  Inspiring, Healing, Poetry

  "Quote, Unquote". Book by Jonathan Williams, p. 136, 1989.

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

  Carl Sandburg

  Dance, Writing, Echoes

  60 Copy quote

• Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beautiful, Mirrors, Poetry

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.33

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beauty, Poetry, World

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.52, Wordsworth Editions

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  Aristotle

  Nature, Poetry Is, Philosophic

  "Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation".

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Running, Attitude, Military

  "Ulysses" l. 65 (1842)

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Marriage, Sweet Love, Educational

  Sonnets from the Portuguese no. 43 (1850)

  116 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

  William Wordsworth

  Powerful, Poetry, Feelings

  Lyrical Ballads 2nd ed., preface (1802) See Dorothy Parker 24

  180 Copy quote

  Show source

• The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

  Jean Cocteau

  Poetry, Poetic, Invention

  10 Copy quote

• Poetry: the best words in the best order.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Writing, Vocabulary, Prose Poetry

  Table Talk 12 July 1827 (1835)

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot

  Death, Poetry, Religion

  "The Hollow Men" l. 95 (1925)

  51 Copy quote

  Show source

• A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

  Paul Valery

  Inspirational, Life, Witty

  67 Copy quote

• No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Time, Men, Profound

  Biographia Literaria ch. 15 (1817)

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A poem begins with a lump in the throat

  Robert Frost

  Inspirational, Writing, Poetry

  Robert Frost, Mark Richardson (2007). “The Collected Prose of Robert Frost”, p.84, Harvard University Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

  e. e. cummings

  Moon, Sun, Romantic Poetry

  E. E. Cummings (2013). “Like a perhaps hand: Poems. Gedichte”, p.45, C.H.Beck

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

  e. e. cummings

  I Love You, Spiritual, Stars

  E. E. Cummings (2013). “Like a perhaps hand: Poems. Gedichte”, p.45, C.H.Beck

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Jobs, Reality, Creating

  24 Copy quote