Great Poetry Quotes - Page 3

• All that is gold does not glitter.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Being Strong, Travel, Fantasy Novels

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.179, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Men, Sea, Rivers

  "Kubla Khan" l. 1 (1816)

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• Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

  Robert Frost

  Hate, Thinking, Fire

  "Fire and Ice" l. 5 (1923)

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• The poem is not a thing we see; it is, rather, a light by which we may see.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Light, Poetry, May

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

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• Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable.

  Carl Sandburg

  Poetry, Barriers, Syllables

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.318, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Great poetry needs no interpreter other than a responsive heart.

  Helen Keller

  Heart, Needs, Interpreter

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• Michel Aflaq - is bad poetry wrapped in the guise of utopian politics, or great poetry wrapped in the guise of horrible politics.

  Elliott Colla

  Horrible, Utopian, Great Poet

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The poem is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful.

  Robert Penn Warren

  Meaningful, Men, Poetry

  1958 In the Saturday Review, 22 Mar.

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• Summer's lease hath all too short a date.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Poetry, Too Short

  Sonnet 18

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• I don't even think any stimulants really help writing. You talk to most guys and they say, "Hey. I wrote this." And they're out of their head or they had a few beers or a bottle of whiskey. You wake up the next morning, it's usually pretty crap. But you know Dylan Thomas wrote some great poetry. Brendan Behan. You never know but ultimately I'd say you have to get up early in the morning and you're usually sober when you write your good stuff; it's hard work. So alcohol, keep it for chilling out, fun, and having a good time. Not for work.

  Gavin Friday

  Morning, Fun, Hard Work

  Source: bigthink.com

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• There's great poetry in the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'm not interested in trying to prove whether this paragraph is as it was or as it should have been or should not be. My pursuit is to find the truth for me in those stories and make them apropos. The important thing is that people wrote them. These were inspirational stories, and you got to see them that way. If you don't, you'll get in trouble. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to find out whether or not Mary was a virgin. What do I care about Mary being a virgin?

  Cecil Williams

  People, Trying, Important

  Source: www.psychologytoday.com

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• A great emotion is too selfish ; it takes into itself all the blood of the spirit, and the congestion leaves the hands too cold to write. Three sorts of emotion produce great poetry - strong but quick emotions, seized upon for art as soon as they have passed, but not before they have passed ; strong and deep emotions in their remembrance along time after ; and false emotions, that is to say, emotions felt in the intellect. Not insincerity, but a translated sincerity, is the basis of all art.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Strong, Art, Selfish

  Fernando Pessoa (1988). “Always Astonished: Selected Prose”, p.53, City Lights Books

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• Shakespeare wrote great poetry and preposterous plays. Who really cares, for example, which petty tyrant rules Milan? Or who succeeds to the throne of Denmark? Or why the barons ganged up on Richard II?

  Edward Abbey

  Play, Tyrants, Example

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.35, RosettaBooks

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• Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it.

  Witold Gombrowicz

  Admire

  Witold Gombrowicz (2012). “Ferdydurke”, p.43, Yale University Press

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• All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.

  Edith Sitwell

  Heart, Poetry, Great Poet

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• The most beautiful conception of immortality of which I know, and certainly one that by contrast shows the utter vulgarity of Christian ideas, is set forth in Pindar's second Olympian: after three or six lives in which a man has lived with strict justice and perfect integrity, he passes beyond the tower of Cronus to the fair realm that cannot be reached by land or sea, where gentle breezes from a placid ocean blow forever on the fields of asphodel. For a description, see Pindar. If the beauty of great poetry can commend a religion, here you have it.

  Revilo P. Oliver

  Beautiful, Christian, Integrity

  "Afterthoughts on Afterlife". "Instauration" Magazine, August 1980.

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• The more serious poetry of the race has a philosophical structure of thought. It contains beliefs and conceptions in regard to the nature of man and the universe, God and the soul, fate and providence, suffering, evil and destiny. Great poetry always has, like the higher religion, a metaphysical content. It deals with the same august issues, experiences and conceptions as metaphysics or first philosophy.

  Joseph Alexander Leighton

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Fate

  Joseph Alexander Leighton (1919). “The field of philosophy: an outline of lectures on introduction to philosophy”

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• You don't have to live in a garage to write great poetry.

  Felix Dennis

  Writing, Garage, Great Poet

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• Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.

  Anthony Burgess

  Modern Youth, Down And, Great Music

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.48, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I'm not a great poetry fan.

  Rupert Everett

  Fans, Great Poet

  "Rupert Everett: 'If I'd been straight? I'd be doing what Hugh Grant and Colin Firth do, I suppose" by Emma Brockes, www.theguardian.com. July 20, 2009.

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• I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really top that.

  Diane Wakoski

  Thinking, Years, Interesting

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• The romanticised life, where all the great poetry and music and art of the world comes from, is great but it requires a lot of self-indulgence.

  Laura Marling

  Art, Self, Poetry And Music

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• There are few greater treasures to be acquired in youth than great poetry-and prose-stored in the memory. At the time one may resent the labor of storing. But they sleep in the memory and awake in later years, illuminated by life and illuminating it.

  Richard Livingstone

  Memories, Sleep, Years

  Richard Livingstone (2013). “On Education”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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• Because science flourishes, must poesy decline? The complaint serves but to betray the weakness of the class who urge it. True, in an age like the present,-considerably more scientific than poetical,-science substitutes for the smaller poetry of fiction, the great poetry of truth.

  Hugh Miller

  Science, Class, Age

  Hugh Miller, Harriet Myrtle (1859). “Sketch book of popular geology: Popular geology: A series of lectures read before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh”, p.123

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• She had never realized any love save love as passion. Such love, though it expends itself in generosity and thoughtfulness, though it give birth to visions and to great poetry, remains among the sharpest expressions of self-interest. Not until it has passed though a long servitude, though its own self-hatred, though mockery, though great doubts, can it take its place among the loyalties. Many who have spent a lifetime in it can tell us less of love than the child that lost a dog yesterday.

  Thornton Wilder

  Loyalty, Dog, Children

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