Poetry Quotes - Page 2

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

  Carl Sandburg

  Dance, Writing, Echoes

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• How do you define a poet? It's very simple. Anyone declaring that he is a poet, is a poet.

  Billy Cannon

  Simple, Poet, Declaring

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• These days, if you happen to be a poet you have to sing your words to get your ideas out.

  Sara Genn

  Ideas, These Days, Happens

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• A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

  John Keats

  Stars, Long, Imagination

  Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 170

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• A comic matter cannot be expressed in tragic verse.
  [Lat., Versibus exponi tragicis res comica non vult.]

  Horace

  Matter, Comic, Tragic

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• Confined to common life thy numbers flow,
  And neither soar too high nor sink too low;
  There strength and ease in graceful union meet,
  Though polished, subtle, and though poignant, sweet;
  Yet powerful to abash the from of crime
  And crimson error's cheek with sportive rhyme.
  [Lat., Verba togae sequeris, junctura callidus acri,
  Ore teres modico, pallentes radere mores
  Doctus, et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo.]

  Aulus Persius Flaccus

  Sweet, Powerful, Numbers

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• All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
  One time it was a woman's face, or worse--
  The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
  Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
  Than this accustomed toil.

  William Butler Yeats

  Hands, Land, Crafts

  William Butler Yeats (1962). “Poems of William Butler Yeats”, p.38, Hayes Barton Press

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• Our earliest poets were shamans. Today, as in the earliest times, true shamans are poets of consciousness who know the power of song and story to teach and to heal.

  Robert Moss

  Song, Stories, Today

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• Lives there the man with soul so dead as to disown the wish to merit the people's applause, and having uttered words worthy to be kept in cedar oil to latest times, to leave behind him rhymes that dread neither herrings nor frankincense.

  Aulus Persius Flaccus

  Men, Oil, People

  "The satires of Persius". Book by Persius, 1799.

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• I hate my verses, every line, every word. Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky. Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.

  Robinson Jeffers

  Hate, Twilight, Curves

  Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (1988). “The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1928-1938”, p.410, Stanford University Press

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• Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men.

  James Russell Lowell

  Pride, Men, Heaven

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.40

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• Poetry is good for unleashing images.

  Paula Rego

  Unleashing, Poetry Is

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• For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

  Banjo Paterson

  Life, Travel, Cowboy

  Banjo Paterson (2010). “Banjo Paterson Complete Poems”, p.33, HarperCollins Australia

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• We must never underestimate our power to be wrong when talking about God, when thinking about God, when imagining God, whether in prose or in poetry. A generous orthodoxy, in contrast to the tense, narrow, or controlling orthodoxies of so much of Christian history, doesn't take itself too seriously. It is humble. It doesn't claim too much. It admits it walks with a limp.

  Brian D. McLaren

  God, Christian, Humble

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• The only true aristocracy is that of consciousness.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Novelists, Aristocracy, Serious

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• I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.

  A. E. Housman

  Rats, Terriers

  A. E. Housman (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of A. E. Housman (Illustrated)”, p.153, Delphi Classics

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• My life has been the poem I would have writ,
  But I could not both live and utter it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Has Beens

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Quotable Thoreau: An A to Z Glossary of Inspiring Quotations from Henry David Thoreau”, p.59, BookBaby

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• All poetry is misrepresentation.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Misrepresentation, Poetry Is

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Austin (1962). “Utilitarianism ; On Liberty ; Essay on Bentham: Together with Selected Writings of Jeremy Bentham and John Austin”

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• The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed.

  William Butler Yeats

  Men, Bed, Visionaries

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• You speak
  As one who fed on poetry.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Speak, Feds

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• Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker.

  Allen Tate

  Bankers, Mysterious, Said

  Allen Tate (1999). “Essays of Four Decades”, Isi Books

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• I am looking for a poem that says Everything so I don't have to write anymore.

  Tukaram

  Writing

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• Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. Some have done nothing else.

  Augustus William Hare

  Done, Poet, Painter

  Augustus William Hare (1827). “Guesses at Truth”, p.271

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• A perfect poem is impossible. Once it had been written, the world would end.
  Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  Robert Graves

  Perfect, Immature, World

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• Well, write poetry, for God's sake, it's the only thing that matters.

  e. e. cummings

  Writing, Sake, Matter

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