Poems Quotes

SuccessIf you want a thing bad enoughTo go out and fight for it,Work day and night for it,Give up your time and your peace and your sleep for itIf only desire of itMakes you quite mad enoughNever to tire of it,Makes you hold all other things tawdry and cheap for itIf life seems all empty and useless without itAnd all that you scheme and you dream is about it,If gladly you'll sweat for it,Fret for it,Plan for it,Lose all your terror of God or man for it,If you'll simply go after that thing that you want.With all your capacity,Strength and sagacity,Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,Nor sickness nor painOf body or brainCan turn you away from the thing that you want,If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,You'll get it!

~ Berton Braley

They're only trees. Only trees. Whose afraid of lonely trees?

~ Ruth Frances Long

Don't ask me what it means, ask me how it felt.

~ Jill Telford

The Ph.D is one of the chosen who know that some things can never be fathomed, no matter how hard you try. What good are explanations? There is no possibility of explaining how such a work [Mozart's Requiem, in the instance] could ever have come into being. (The same holds true for certain poems, which should not be analyzed either.)

~ Elfriede Jelinek

Poems are the chorus of our lives. the poet sets the words to the music of our souls. Each poem has its own rhythm that drums like a heartbeat.

~ John Ritter

Yesterday I fell completely off the face of the earthContemplating life, light and love in the darkness of the voidStrangely it was in the dark that I found meaning for the light

~ Neil Leckman

Two seeds destined to grow in concert, planted together in the field of love.’” She took in a lungful of air and continued. “‘The sky cast wet buckets of dreams and desires, the roots took shape, and the leaves tangled as one.

~ Christina Lee

We are not what we might be, what we are / Outlaws all extrapolation / Beyond the interval of now and here: / White whales are gone with the white ocean.

~ Sylvia Plath

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.

~ W.h. Auden

You leave behind your fine poems.You leave behind your beautiful flowers. And the earth that was only leant to you. You ascend into the Light, O Quechomitl, you leave behind the flowers and the singing and the earth. Safe journey, O friend.

~ Aliette De Bodard

The poems are all wrong. It's a bang, a really big bang. Not a whimper. And sometimes gold can stay.

~ Kami Garcia

[poems are] crystals deposited after the effervescent contact of the spirit with reality.(cristaux deposes apres l'effervescent contact de l'esprit avec la realite)

~ Pierre Reverdy

Horse[Man you will find herea new representation of the universeat its most poetic and most modernMan man man man man manGive yourself up to this art where the sublimedoes not exclude charmand brilliancy does not blur the nuanceit is now or never the momentto be sensitive to poetry for it dominatesall dreadfullyGuillaume Apollinaire]

~ Guillaume Apollinaire

...some of the best love poems have been written by monks and nuns...

~ John Geddes

The rat isthe mous-tacheinthetrache.the wrong-doerinthesoer.

~ J. Patrick Lewis

Asthmatic spewer of filth gasps, but clean air does not sufficeTo fuel fires fueled by thoughts got rottenLest we all be forgotten thingsThat sit like dust upon the mantel of her mind

~ Neil Leckman

It lies here deep in the heart, the small chest of painSharp words like daggers placed it hereTo fill with hurtIn filling it grew heavy and drug me downFor to not feel is not to liveUntil I rest at last in dirtThe worst of you got the best of me…

~ Neil Leckman

You should gofrom place to placerecovering the poemsthat have been written for youto which you can affix your signature.Don't discuss these matterswith anyone.Retrieve. Retrieve.When the basket is fullsomeone will appearto whom you can present it.

~ Leonard Cohen

When I Read the BookWhen I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life,Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

~ Walt Whitman

The machines are too dull when weare lion-poems that move & breathe.

~ Michael Mcclure

Daddy-by Nancy B. BrewerWhen I used to say, speak up you are as good as they, You would just smile and say, let them have their way. When in my foolish youth, I so often disobeyed,He would just smile and say, let her have her way. When summer passed and winter overcame. He was not afraid, never once did he say. When in the moonlight his final hour came, He just smiled and said Lord I'll go your way.

~ Nancy B. Brewer

Emotional pain was the price I paid on the path to becoming a woman. So excuse me if I’m not clueless like a little girl.

~ J.a. Anum

My soul is crushed under the weight of tears I can’t spill.

~ J.a. Anum

Even famous poets such as Marianne Moore and William Carlos Williams were rarely asked to read their poems.

~ Donald Hall

I still read Donne, particularly his love poems.

~ Carol Ann Duffy