Poetry Quotes

People with yuan fen are destined to like one another;Friendship develops even if a thousand miles apart.But should yuan fen be absent between two individuals,They will remain strangers despite sitting face-to-face

~ Adeline Yen Mah

Most of my friends like words too well. They set them under the blinding light of the poem and try to extract every possible connotation from each of them, every temporary pun, every direct or indirect connection - as if a word could become an object by mere addition of consequences. Others pick up words from the streets, from their bars, from their offices and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, See what I have collected from the American language. Look at my butterflies, my stamps, my old shoes! What does one do with all this crap?

~ Jack Spicer

Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Soy el desesperado, la palabra sin ecos, el que lo perdiò todo, y el que todo lo tuvo.

~ Pablo Neruda

When she left me I stood out in the thunderstorm, hoping to be destroyed by lightning. It missed, first left, then right.

~ Ted Kooser

Interior of the hand. Sole that has come to walkonly on feelings. That faces upwardand in its mirrorreceives heavenly roads, which travelalong themselves.That has learned to walk upon waterwhen it scoops,that walks upon wells,transfiguring every path.That steps into other hands,changes those that are like itinto a landscape:wanders and arrives within them,fills them with arrival.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Prose: words in their best order, poetry: the best words in the best order.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Still, what I want in my lifeis to be willingto be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of factsand maybe evento float a littleabove this difficult world.I want to believe I am lookinginto the white fire of a great mystery.I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—that the light is everything—that it is more than the sumof each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

~ Mary Oliver

From quiet homes and first beginning,Out to the undiscovered ends,There's nothing worth the wear of winning,But laughter and the love of friends.

~ Hilaire Belloc

World is suddener than we fancy it.

~ Louis Macneice

Love is the only bow on Life’s dark cloud. It is the morning and the evening star. It shines upon the babe, and sheds its radiance on the quiet tomb. It is the mother of art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher.It is the air and light of every heart – builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody – for music is the voice of love.Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to Joy, and makes royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of that wondrous flower, the heart, and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven, and we are gods.

~ Robert G. Ingersoll

There's in my mind a...turbulent moon-ridden girlor old woman, or both,dressed in opals and rags, feathersand torn taffeta,who knows strange songsbut she is not kind.

~ Denise Levertov

Sweet is the lore which nature brings,Our meddling intellectMisshapes the beauteous forms of things,—We murder to dissect.

~ William Wordsworth

Sully suffers from a stutter,simple syllables will clutter,stalling speeches up on beacheslike a sunken sailboat rudder.Sully strains to say his phrases,sickened by the sounds he raises,strings of thoughts come out in knots,he solves his sentences like mazes.At night, he writes his thoughts insteadand sighs as they steadily rush from his head.

~ Bo Burnham

Now therefore, while the youthful hue Sits on thy skin like morning dew, And while thy willing soul transpires At every pore with instant fires, Now let us sport us while we may, And now, like amorous birds of prey, Rather at once our time devour Than languish in his slow-chapped power.Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Thorough the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.

~ Andrew Marvell

When Hitler marched across the RhineTo take the land of France,La dame de fer decided,‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’Let him take the land and city,The hills and every flower,One thing he will never have,The elegant Eiffel Tower.The French cut the cables,The elevators stood still,‘If he wants to reach the top,Let him walk it, if he will.’The invaders hung a swastikaThe largest ever seen.But a fresh breeze blewAnd away it flew,Never more to be seen.They hung up a second mark,Smaller than the first,But a patriot climbedWith a thought in mind:‘Never your duty shirk.’Up the iron ladyHe stealthily made his way,Hanging the bright tricolour,He heroically saved the day.Then, for some strange reason,A mystery to this day,Hitler never climbed the tower,On the ground he had to stay.At last he ordered she be razedDown to a twisted pile.A futile attack, for still she standsBeaming her metallic smile.

~ E.a. Bucchianeri

Twas noontide of summer,And mid-time of night;And stars, in their orbits,Shone pale, thro' the lightOf the brighter, cold moon,'Mid planets her slaves,Herself in the Heavens,Her beam on the waves.I gazed awhileOn her cold smile;Too cold–too cold for me-There pass'd, as a shroud,A fleecy cloud,And I turned away to thee,Proud Evening Star,In thy glory afar,And dearer thy beam shall be;For joy to my heartIs the proud partThou bearest in Heaven at night,And more I admireThy distant fire,Than that colder, lowly light.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

I have no words — alas! — to tellThe loveliness of loving well!

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Oh I know it's cliché but yeah they say that great men make it in-To places few others who even do take the risk've ever been

~ Criss Jami

Lives of great men all remind usWe can make our lives sublime,And, departing, leave behind usFootprints on the sands of time;Footprints, that perhaps another,Sailing o'er life's solemn main,A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,Seeing, shall take heart again.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Άλλα ζητεί η ψυχή σου, γι’ άλλα κλαίει·

~ Constantinos P. Cavafis

When I say that I love animals, I mean to say that I am IN love with them. Because they don't know evil and have never been tempted by it. Because they are the purest image of any higher being I have ever known. Because their souls are made of a much larger magic than my own, and if you let them, they will show it to you. Because this world is theirs, they were here first. And we should all love them a little more for graciously allowing us to have so much of it.

~ Mia Hollow

a woman will tell youevery home she has ever inhabitedhas been broken intostarting with her body

~ Suheir Hammad

¡Los suspiros son aire y van al aire!¡Las lágrimas son agua y van al mar!Dime, mujer, cuando el amor se olvida¿sabes tú adónde va?

~ Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.

~ John Keats

Her close friends have gathered.Lord, ain't it a shameGrieving togetherSharing the blame.But when she was dyingLord, we let her down.There's no use cryin'It can't help her now.The party's all overDrink up and go home.It's too late to love herAnd leave her alone.Just say she was someoneLord, so far from homeWhose life was so lonesomeShe died all aloneWho dreamed pretty dreamsThat never came trueLord, why was she bornSo black and blue?Oh, why was she bornSo black and blue?Epitaph (Black And Blue) Written by: Kris KristoffersonNote: Epitaph is about Janis Joplin.

~ Kris Kristofferson

Little world, full of little peopleshouting for recognition, screaming for love, Rolling world, teeming with millions,carousel of the hungry,Is there food enough? Wheat and corn will not do.The fat are the hungriest of all, the skinny the most silent.

~ James Kavanaugh

Let's get loosewith compassion.Let's drown in the deliciousambiance oflove.

~ Hafiz

Don't sign your namebetween worlds,surmountthe manifold of meanings,trust the tearstain,learn to live.

~ Paul Celan

Open the fridge and putMy heart on a plate.I'm just as you leftme, and I taste even betterleftover.

~ Cecily Von Ziegesar

I'm going to do something bigger and better,bigger and betterand bolder, but first,I'm going to do somethingsmaller and worse.

~ Jonarno Lawson

I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.

~ Mary Karr

A poem is never a put-up job, so to speak. It begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It is never a thought to begin with.

~ Robert Frost

I couldn't tell fact from fiction,Or if the dream was trueMy only sure predictionIn this world was you.I'd touch your features inchly. Beard love and dared the cost, The sented spiel reeled me unreal And I found my senses lost.

~ Maya Angelou

My Personalityunfolding before youlike a Swiss Army knife.

~ Katerina Stoykova Klemer

But let us laugh carelessly like other men. Let us be timid even among fools. Let us knot silence around our throats.For they would surely kill us.

~ Glenway Wescott

Don’t write with a pen. Ink tends to give the impression the words shouldn’t be changed.Write with what gives you the most sensual satisfaction.Write in a hard-covered notebook with green lined pages. Green is easy on the eyes. Blank white pages seems to challenge you to create the world before you start writing. It may be true that you, the modern poet, must make the world as you go, but why be reminded of it before you even have one word on the page?Don’t erase. Cross out rapidly and violently, never with slow consideration if you can help it.Start, as some smarty once said, in the middle of things.Play with syntax.Never want to say anything so strongly that you have to give up the option of finding something better – if you have to say it, you will.Read your poem aloud many times. If you don’t enjoy it every time, something may be wrong.If you ask a question, don’t answer it, or answer a question not asked, or defer. (If you can answer the question, to ask it is to waste time).Maximum sentence length: seventeen words.Minimum: One.Don’t be afraid to take emotional possession of words. If you don’t love a few words enough to own them, you will have to be very clever to write a good poem.

~ Richard Hugo

I love women whose hidden desires make horses put an end to their lives at the threshold

~ Mahmoud Darwish

I am not collarbones or drunken letters never sent. I am not the way I leave or left or didn’t know how to handle anything,at any time,and I am not your fault.

~ Charlotte Eriksson

You are only as free as you think you are and freedom will always be as real as you believe it to be.

~ Robert M. Drake