Poetry Quotes

When one does something, one must do it wholly and well. Those bastard existences where you sell suet all day and write poetry at night are made for mediocre minds – like those horses that are equally good for saddle and carriage, the worst kind, that can neither jump a ditch nor pull a plow.

~ Gustave Flaubert

Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The fact that Iam writing to youin Englishalready falsifies what Iwanted to tell you.My subject:how to explain to youthat I don't belong to Englishthough I belong nowhere else,if not herein English.

~ Gustavo Perez Firmat

Souls grow on bones but die beneath bankers' hours...

~ Gabriel Thy

Is Bliss then, such Abyss,I must not put my foot amissFor fear I spoil my shoe? I'd rather suit my footThan save my Boot --For yet to buy another Pairis possible,At any store -- But Bliss, is sold just once.The Patent lostNone buy it any more --

~ Emily Dickinson

Every good poem asks a question, and every good poet asks every question.

~ Dorianne Laux

If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?

~ Joyce Carol Oates

That mortal is a fool who, prospering, thinks his life has any strong foundation; since our fortune's course of action is the reeling way a madman takes, and no one person is ever happy all the time.

~ Euripides

I was the first Chicano to write in complete sentences.

~ Gary Soto

Open wide the mind's cage-door,She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.

~ John Keats

Weary of myself, and sick of asking What I am, and what I ought to be, At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

~ Matthew Arnold

CALL YOURSELFLook deep in the mirrorAnd say: 'I LOVE YOU'And immediatelyAn electric current willRipple throughout your soulAnd burst through your eyesLike shooting starsDancing across the skiesIn ecstasy.To tell your soul you love it -Is like rememberingWHO YOU AREAfter being in a comaFor a hundred years.Your face will beam the lightOf a hundred galaxies.

~ Suzy Kassem

I do believe in poetry. I believe that there are creatures endowed with the power to put things together and bring them back to life

~ Hélène Cixous

So all night long the storm roared on:The morning broke without a sun;In tiny spherule traced with linesOf Nature’s geometric signs,In starry flake, and pellicle,All day the hoary meteor fell;And, when the second morning shone,We looked upon a world unknown,On nothing we could call our own.Around the glistening wonder bentThe blue walls of the firmament,No cloud above, no earth below,—A universe of sky and snow!

~ John Greenleaf Whittier

I hid my love when young till ICouldn't bear the buzzing of a fly,I hid my life to my despiteTill I could not bear to look at light:I dare not gaze upon her faceBut left her memory in each place,Where'er I saw a wild flower lieI kissed and bade my love good-bye.

~ John Clare

There is such a shelter in each other.

~ Nick Laird

I have only to contemplate myself; man comes from nothing, passes through time, and disappears forever in the bosom of God. He is seen but for a moment wandering on the verge of two abysses, and then is lost.If man were wholly ignorant of himself he would have no poetry in him, for one cannot describe what one does not conceive. If he saw himself clearly, his imagination would remain idle and would have nothing to add to the picture. But the nature of man is sufficiently revealed for him to know something of himself and sufficiently veiled to leave much impenetrable darkness, a darkness in which he ever gropes, forever in vain, trying to understand himself.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

That is what you meant to me: a light that shone through the darkness.” (Your smile, p. 56)

~ Chimnese Davids

Remembrance and reflection how allied!What thin partitions Sense from Thought divide!

~ Alexander Pope

That's what I want, that kind of recklessness where the poem is even ahead of you. It's like riding a horse that's a little too wild for you, so there's this tension between what you can do and what the horse decides it's going to do.

~ Li-Young Lee

What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.

~ Theodore Roethke

...the wet brush of snowflakes was like your kisses everywhere ...

~ John Geddes

A way of using words to say things which could not possibly be said in any other way, things which in a sense do not exist till they are born … in poetry.

~ Cecil Day-Lewis

. . . chasing after words like trying to grab the tails of comets.

~ Libba Bray

For you may palm upon us new for old:All, as they say, that glitters, is not gold.

~ John Dryden

My heart is small, like a love of buttons or black pepper.

~ S. Jane Sloat

Know that I loved you and that I belonged to you. And I wouldn't have had it any other way.

~ Mia Hollow

Robots are like Mars: they needgirls. Boys won't do,the memesoup is all wrong. They stompwhen they should kissand they're none too keenon having things shoved inside them...It's not a robotuntil you put a girl inside. Sometimes I feel like that. A junkyard the Company forgot to put a girl in.

~ Catherynne M. Valente

I ask for nothing. / In return I give All. / There is no earning my Love. / No work needed, no effort / Save to listen to what is already heard, / To see what is already seen. / To know what is already known. / Do I seem to ask too little? / Would you give although I ask not? / Then this you can give me and I will accept. / I will take your heart. / You will find it waiting for you / When you return.

~ Ki Longfellow

Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back?

~ L.m. Montgomery

Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind.

~ Lauren Oliver

I - will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all.

~ Marc Norman

If I bet on humanity, I'd never cash a ticket.

~ Charles Bukowski

The future says:Dear mortals;I know you are busy with your colourful lives;I have no wish to waste the little time that remainsOn arguments and heated debates;But before I can appearPlease, close your eyes, sit stillAnd listen carefullyTo what I am about to say;I haven't happened yet, but I will.I can't pretend it's going to beBusiness as usual.Things are going to change.I'm going to be unrecognisable.Please, don't open your eyes, not yet.I'm not trying to frighten you.All I ask is that you think of meNot as a wish or a nightmare, but as a storyYou have to tell yourselves -Not with an endingIn which everyone lives happily ever after,Or a B-movie apocalypse,But maybe starting with the line'To be continued...'And see what happens next.Remember this; I am notWritten in stoneBut in time - So please don't shrug and sayWhat can we do?It's too late, etc, etc, etc.Dear mortals,You are such strange creaturesWith your greed and your kindness,And your hearts like broken toys;You carry fear with you everywhereLike a tiny godIn its box of shadows.You love festivals and musicAnd good food.You lie to yourselvesBecause you're afraid of the dark.But the truth is: you are in my handsAnd I am in yours.We are in this together,Face to face and eye to eye;We're made for each other.Now those of you who are still here;Open your eyes and tell me what you see.

~ Nick Drake

Il était tard; ainsi qu'une médaille neuveLa pleine lune s'étalait,Et la solennité de la nuit, comme un fleuveSur Paris dormant ruisselait.

~ Charles Baudelaire

As a poet and as a mathematician, he would reason well; as a mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.

~ Ted Hughes

A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no words written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction. The idea of the tale has been presented unblemished because undisturbed: and this is an end unattainable by the novel. Undue brevity is just as exceptionable here as in the poem; but undue length is yet more to be avoided.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

She has learned to love. To fear. To hate. And then to love again. Through it all, she writes.” ~Once Upon A Time There Was A Girl

~ Kimberly Kinrade

. . . We love fog becauseit shifts old anomalies into the elementssurrounding them. It gives relief from a way of seeing

~ Eavan Boland