Poetry Quotes

Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most glorious—surely never again to set. But against it, deeply entrench'd, holding possession, yet remains, (not only through the churches and schools, but by imaginative literature, and unregenerate poetry,) the fossil theology of the mythic-materialistic, superstitious, untaught and credulous, fable-loving, primitive ages of humanity.

~ Walt Whitman

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.

~ Kahlil Gibran

You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.This is but half the truth.You are also as strong as your strongest link.To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the oceanby the frailty of its foam.To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.

~ Kahlil Gibran

We ran as if to meet the moon.

~ Robert Frost

Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.

~ William Shakespeare

One need not be a chamber to be haunted.

~ Emily Dickinson

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

~ Anna Akhmatova

It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.

~ George Eliot

It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.

~ Maya Angelou

My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool, it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.

~ Mary Oliver

If we surrenderedto earth's intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Lovers find secret placesinside this violent worldwhere they make transactions with beauty.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Poems are a hotline to our hearts, and we forget this emotional power at our peril.

~ Andrew Motion

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

~ W.b. Yeats

There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)

~ William Shakespeare

in a worldfull oftemporary thingsyou area perpetual feeling.

~ Sanober Khan

Looks like what drives me crazyDon't have no effect on you--But I'm gonna keep on at itTill it drives you crazy, too.

~ Langston Hughes

What though the radiance which was once so brightBe now for ever taken from my sight,Though nothing can bring back the hourOf splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;We will grieve not, rather findStrength in what remains behind;In the primal sympathyWhich having been must ever be;In the soothing thoughts that springOut of human suffering;In the faith that looks through death,In years that bring the philosophic mind.

~ William Wordsworth

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these.

~ T.s. Eliot

Every angel is terrifying.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I opened a book and in I strode.Now nobody can find me.I've left my chair, my house, my road,My town and my world behind me.I'm wearing the cloak, I've slipped on the ring,I've swallowed the magic potion.I've fought with a dragon, dined with a kingAnd dived in a bottomless ocean.I opened a book and made some friends.I shared their tears and laughterAnd followed their road with its bumps and bendsTo the happily ever after.I finished my book and out I came.The cloak can no longer hide me.My chair and my house are just the same,But I have a book inside me.

~ Julia Donaldson

From childhood's hour I have not beenAs others were; I have not seenAs others saw; I could not bringMy passions from a common spring.From the same source I have not takenMy sorrow; I could not awakenMy heart to joy at the same tone;And all I loved, I loved alone.Then- in my childhood, in the dawnOf a most stormy life- was drawnFrom every depth of good and illThe mystery which binds me still:From the torrent, or the fountain,From the red cliff of the mountain,From the sun that round me rolledIn its autumn tint of gold,From the lightning in the skyAs it passed me flying by,From the thunder and the storm,And the cloud that took the form(When the rest of Heaven was blue)Of a demon in my view.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

He that is thy friend indeed,He will help thee in thy need:If thou sorrow, he will weep;If thou wake, he cannot sleep:Thus of every grief in heartHe with thee doth bear a part.These are certain signs to knowFaithful friend from flattering foe.

~ William Shakespeare

You had this expression on your face, like you weren’t quite sure you were supposed to be on Earth.

~ Pleasefindthis

I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love said Darcy.Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what isstrong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, Iam convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.

~ Jane Austen

So sweet and delicious do I become,when I am in bed with a manwho, I sense, loves and enjoys me,that the pleasure I bring excels all delight,so the knot of love, however tightit seemed before, is tied tighter still.

~ Veronica Franco

A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.

~ Salman Rushdie

Green was the silence, wet was the light,the month of June trembled like a butterfly.

~ Pablo Neruda

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.

~ Walt Whitman

My mouth is a fire escape.The words coming outdon’t care that they are naked.There is something burning in there.

~ Andrea Gibson

since the thing perhaps isto eat flowers and not to be afraid

~ E.e. Cummings

when man determined to destroy himself he picked the was of shall and finding only why smashed it into because

~ E.e. Cummings

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

~ Truman Capote

the saddest thing is to bea minute to someone,when you've made them your eternity.

~ Sanober Khan

After the first glass of vodkayou can accept just about anythingof life even your own mysteriousnessyou think it is nice that a boxof matches is purple and brown and is called La Petite and comes from Swedenfor they are words that you know and that is all you know words not their feelings or what they mean and you write because you know them not because you understand them because you don't you are stupid and lazy and will never be great but you do what you know because what else is there?

~ Frank O'hara

Voodoo GirlHer skin is white cloth,and she's all sewn apartand she has many colored pinssticking out of her heart.She has many different zombieswho are deeply in her trance.She even has a zombiewho was originally from France.But she knows she has a curse on her,a curse she cannot win.For if someone getstoo close to her,the pins stick farther in.

~ Tim Burton

Nobody wanted your dance,Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your flounderingDrowning life and your effort to save yourself,Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,Looking for something to give.

~ Ted Hughes

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor WitShall lure it back to cancel half a Line,Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

~ Omar Khayyám

Water, water, everywhere,And all the boards did shrink;Water, water, everywhere,Nor any drop to drink.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge