Poetry Quotes

I have drunken deep of joy,And I will taste no other wine tonight.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

~ W.h. Auden

My turn shall also come:I sense the spreading of a wing.

~ Osip Mandelstam

Far over the misty mountains coldTo dungeons deep and caverns oldWe must away ere break of dayTo seek the pale enchanted gold.The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,While hammers fell like ringing bellsIn places deep, where dark things sleep,In hollow halls beneath the fells.For ancient king and elvish lordThere many a gleaming golden hoardThey shaped and wrought, and light they caughtTo hide in gems on hilt of sword.On silver necklaces they strungThe flowering stars, on crowns they hungThe dragon-fire, in twisted wireThey meshed the light of moon and sun.Far over the misty mountains coldTo dungeons deep and caverns oldWe must away, ere break of day,To claim our long-forgotten gold.Goblets they carved there for themselvesAnd harps of gold; where no man delvesThere lay they long, and many a songWas sung unheard by men or elves.The pines were roaring on the height,The wind was moaning in the night.The fire was red, it flaming spread;The trees like torches blazed with light.The bells were ringing in the daleAnd men looked up with faces pale;The dragon's ire more fierce than fireLaid low their towers and houses frail.The mountain smoked beneath the moon;The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.They fled their hall to dying fallBeneath his feet, beneath the moon.Far over the misty mountains grimTo dungeons deep and caverns dimWe must away, ere break of day,To win our harps and gold from him!

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

to live in this worldyou must be ableto do three thingsto love what is mortal;to hold itagainst your bones knowingyour own life depends on it;and, when the time comes to let it go,to let it go

~ Mary Oliver

Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.

~ Greg Bear

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?

~ Vincent Van Gogh

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

~ Novalis

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.

~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

~ W.s. Merwin

Music is the universal language of mankind.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There is freedom waiting for you,On the breezes of the sky,And you ask What if I fall?Oh but my darling,What if you fly?

~ Erin Hanson

Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

~ Virginia Woolf

The rain to the wind said,You push and I'll pelt.'They so smote the garden bedThat the flowers actually knelt,And lay lodged--though not dead.I know how the flowers felt.

~ Robert Frost

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

~ Emily Dickinson

Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.And without feet I can make my way to you,without a mouth I can swear your name.Break off my arms, I'll take hold of youwith my heart as with a hand.Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.And if you consume my brain with fire,I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

~ William Ernest Henley

She walks in beauty, like the nightOf cloudless climes and starry skies;And all that's best of dark and brightMeet in her aspect and her eyes...

~ George Gordon Byron

April is the cruelest month, breedinglilacs out of the dead land, mixingmemory and desire, stirringdull roots with spring rain.

~ T.s. Eliot

Live not for Battles Won.Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.

~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Come away, O human child!To the waters and the wildWith a faery, hand in hand,For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

~ W.b. Yeats

We the mortals touch the metals,the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,knowing they will go on, inert or burning,and I was discovering, naming all the these things:it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.

~ Pablo Neruda

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

~ William Faulkner

Though much is taken, much abides; and thoughWe are not now that strength which in old daysMoved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;One equal temper of heroic hearts,Made weak by time and fate, but strong in willTo strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

~ Alfred Tennyson

I love a sunburnt country,A land of sweeping plains,Of ragged mountain ranges,Of droughts and flooding rains.I love her far horizons,I love her jewel-sea,Her beauty and her terror –The wide brown land for me!

~ Dorothea Mackellar

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”But I say unto you, they are inseparable.Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

~ Kahlil Gibran

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, life is your child, but there is in meOlder and harder than life and more impartial, the eye that watched before there was an ocean.

~ Robinson Jeffers

You give but little when you give of your possessions.It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

~ Kahlil Gibran

Poetry is just so emo. he said. Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.

~ John Green

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

~ Arthur Rimbaud

A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

~ Dylan Thomas

My candle burns at both ends;It will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.

~ Robert Frost

I'm nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell! They ’d banish us, you know. How dreary to be somebody! How public, like a frog To tell your name the livelong day To an admiring bog!

~ Emily Dickinson

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

~ T.s. Eliot

The poetry of the earth is never dead.

~ John Keats

A woman knows very well that, though a wit sends her his poems, praises her judgment, solicits her criticism, and drinks her tea, this by no means signifies that he respects her opinions, admires her understanding, or will refuse, though the rapier is denied him, to run through the body with his pen.

~ Virginia Woolf

I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

~ Mary Oliver

If I can see pain in your eyes then share with me your tears. If I can see joy in your eyes then share with me your smile.

~ Santosh Kalwar