Poet Quotes

Good or bad, positive or negative, there is no comment more insulting to a poet than one displaying that you have not properly read and considered the things they wrote.

~ Jasper Sole

These are all direct quotes, except every time they use a curse word, I'm going to use the name of a famous American poet:'You Walt Whitman-ing, Edna St. Vincent Millay! Go Emily Dickinson your mom!''Thanks for the advice, you pathetic piece of E.E. Cummings, but I think I'm gonna pass.''You Robert Frost-ing Nikki Giovanni! Get a life, nerd. You're a virgin.''Hey bro, you need to go outside and get some fresh air into you. Or a girlfriend.'I need to get a girlfriend into me? I think that shows a fundamental lack of comprehension about how babies are made.

~ John Green

The poet is at the edge of our consciousness of the world, finding beyond the suspected nothingness which we imagine limits our perception another acre or so of being worth our venturing upon.

~ Guy Davenport

I thought, 'There are a lot of poets who have the courage to look into the abyss, but there are very few who have the courage to look happiness in the face and write about it,' which is what I wanted to be able to do.

~ Kenneth Koch

This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears.

~ Emil M. Cioran

Being in prison for seven years was like being in an army that never drilled, never deployed, and only fought itself.

~ Raegan Butcher

That's a poet.''I thought you said it was a bo-at.''Stupid pet! Don't you know what a poet it?''Why, a thing to sail on the water in.''Well, perhaps you're not so far wrong. Some poets do carry people over the sea....'...'A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.

~ George Macdonald

There is also a fable told by Phaedrus, about how Simonides was once a victim of shipwreck. As the other passengers scurried about the sinking ship trying to save their possessions, the poet stood idle. When questioned, he declared, mecum mea sunt cuncta: everything that is me is with me.

~ Anne Carson

...a bard's down-to-earth love: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red and when she walks, treads on the ground...

~ John Geddes

One does not become a poet by uttering beautiful words. One becomes a poet by pouring their soul as wine into the Cup of Love.

~ Subhan Zein

...you called me poet-priest - I am. ...devoted to my art, faithful to you...or, is the other way around?...

~ John Geddes

...what else would a poet priest do on an endless night, but write of love?...

~ John Geddes

He was, as every truly great poet has ever been, a good man; but finding it impossible to realize his own aspirations, either in religion or politics, or society, he gave up his heart to the living spirit and light within him, and avenged himself on the world by enriching it with this record of his own transcendental ideal.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Nations conquered and true love prevails, all encompassed in a poets tale.

~ R.j. Craddock

Sometimes it’s great, and sometimes it’s shit.These are the things all the great philosophersjust won’t tell you flat out about life. You keep moving, keep living, keep breathingAnd you keep writing-creating because that’s what you doAnd that’s who you are. There are no magical voices to guideYou except your own. Make it count.~ R.M. ENGELHARDT

~ R.m. Engelhardt (Talon)

...I guess you're right - I am a priest - I offer sacrifices - so take this line, I want you to have something of mine...

~ John Geddes

A poet in his senses knocks vainly at the gates of poetry.

~ Ben Johnson

Words are powerful. Words make a difference. They can create and destroy. They can open doors and close doors. Words can create illusion or magic, love or destruction. … All those things.

~ R.m. Engelhardt (Talon)

I have wished you something None of the others would....

~ Philip Larkin

For if it is rash to walk into a lion's den unarmed, rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat, rash to stand on one foot on top of St. Paul's, it is still more rash to go home alone with a poet.

~ Virginia Woolf

One's-Self I Sing One's-self I sing, a simple separate person, Yet utter the word Democratic, the word En-Masse. Of physiology from top to toe I sing, Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse, I say the Form complete is worthier far, The Female equally with the Male I sing. Of Life immense in passion, pulse, and power, Cheerful, for freest action form'd under the laws divine, The Modern Man I sing.

~ Walt Whitman

Not a lawyer but carries within him the debris of a poet.

~ Gustave Flaubert

And muse on Nature with a poet's eye.

~ Thomas Campbell

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.

~ William Shakespeare

God is the perfect poet.

~ Robert Browning

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

~ Oscar Wilde

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

~ Jean Cocteau