Poetry Quotes

Exercises are like prose, whereas yoga is the poetry of movements. Once you understand the grammar of yoga; you can write your poetry of movements.

~ Amit Ray

Women who focus on style over substance usually find themselves in a big fucking hole, with other men who want to fuck the hole. Oh so smooth, and none sophistacted. Because, you know, how sophisticated can hole-fucking really be

~ Emilie Autumn

And so sepúlchred in such pomp dost lie,That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

~ John Milton

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

~ Walt Whitman

To those who abuse: the sin is yours, the crime is yours, and the shame is yours. To those who protect the perpetrators: blaming the victims only masks the evil within, making you as guilty as those who abuse. Stand up for the innocent or go down with the rest.

~ Flora Jessop

And would it have been worth it, after all,Would it have been worth while,After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets, After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor - And this, and so much more? -

~ T.s. Eliot

A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.

~ Criss Jami

never trust anyone who says they do not see color. this means to them,you are invisible.

~ Nayyirah Waheed

Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If you must write prose or poems, the words you use should be your own. Don't plagiarize or take 'on loan'. There's always someone, somewhere, with a big nose, who knows, who'll trip you up and laugh when you fall.

~ Morrissey

[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

~ Adrienne Rich

And the most beautiful words ever spoken, I have not yet said to you.

~ Nâzım Hikmet

Perfumes are the feelings of flowers.

~ Heinrich Heine

So runs my dream, but what am I?An infant crying in the nightAn infant crying for the lightAnd with no language but a cry.

~ Alfred Tennyson

If I never meet you In this lifeLet me feel the lackA glance from your eyesThen my life Will be yours

~ James Jones

Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,You shall possess the good of the earth and sun.... there are millions of suns left,You shall no longer take things at second or third hand.... nor look through the eyes of the dead.... nor feed on the spectres in books,You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,You shall listen to all sides and filter them from yourself.

~ Walt Whitman

It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

their heart grew coldthey let their wings down

~ Sappho

Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

A billion stars go spinning through the night,glittering above your head,But in you is the presence that will bewhen all the stars are dead.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow-You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,? that we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

When you are old and grey and full of sleep And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep

~ W.b. Yeats

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.

~ Gaston Bachelard

I've triedto become someone else for a while,only to discover that he, too, was me.

~ Stephen Dunn

Truths are written, never said... Lines are drawn, but then they fade.

~ Colleen Hoover

I am not yours, not lost in you,Not lost, although I long to beLost as a candle lit at noon,Lost as a snowflake in the sea.You love me, and I find you stillA spirit beautiful and bright,Yet I am I, who long to beLost as a light is lost in light.

~ Sara Teasdale

We pull our boots on with both handsbut we can't punch ourselves awake and all I can do is stand on the curb and say Sorryabout the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.I couldn't get the boy to kill me, but I wore his jacket for the longest time.

~ Richard Siken

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.

~ Jack Kerouac

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. (Don't Hesitate)

~ Mary Oliver

You dance inside my chest,where no one sees you,but sometimes I do, and thatsight becomes this art.

~ Jalaluddin Rumi

The difference between the poet and the mathematician is that the poet tries to get his head into the heavens while the mathematician tries to get the heavens into his head.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Don't tell me you're not beautiful. You're the kind of beautiful the blind would see if we could figure out some way to give them three seconds of sight.

~ Shane L. Koyczan

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.

~ Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Licence my roving hands, and let them go Before, behind, between, above, below.

~ John Donne

I live not in myself, but I becomePortion of that around me: and to meHigh mountains are a feeling, but the humof human cities torture.

~ George Gordon Byron

Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman-But who is that on the other side of you?

~ T.s. Eliot

Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie.

~ John Milton

Love is a clash of lightnings

~ Pablo Neruda

Love is a fire that burns unseen,a wound that aches yet isn’t felt,an always discontent contentment,a pain that rages without hurting,a longing for nothing but to long,a loneliness in the midst of people,a never feeling pleased when pleased,a passion that gains when lost in thought.It’s being enslaved of your own free will;it’s counting your defeat a victory;it’s staying loyal to your killer.But if it’s so self-contradictory,how can Love, when Love chooses,bring human hearts into sympathy?

~ Luís De Camões