Poetry Quotes

How blest am I in this discovering thee!To enter in these bonds is to be free;Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be. Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be

~ John Donne

And then I feel the sun itselfas it blazes over the hills,like a million flowers on fire --clearly I'm not needed,yet I feel myself turninginto something of inexplicable value.-from The Buddha's Last Instruction

~ Mary Oliver

Henceforth an individual solace dear; Part of my Soul I seek thee, and thee claim My other half: with that thy gentle hand Seisd mine, I yielded, and from that time see How beauty is excelld by manly grace.

~ John Milton

The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way, the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way. The two are incompatible.

~ Paul A.m. Dirac

Straight between them ran the pathway,Never grew the grass upon it

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,Student of our sweet English tongue,Read out my words at night, alone:I was a poet, I was young.Since I can never see your face,And never shake you by the hand,I send my soul through time and spaceTo greet you. You will understand.

~ James Elroy Flecker

Spend all you have for loveliness,Buy it and never count the cost;For one white singing hour of peaceCount many a year of strife well lost,And for a breath of ecstasyGive all you have been, or could be.

~ Sara Teasdale

Then all the charm Is broken--all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shape the other.

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Once upon a timeI fell in loveLost myselfAnd find another one.

~ Arzum Uzun

Every particle of dust on a patch of earthWas a sun-cheek or brow of the morning star;Shake the dust off your sleeve carefully--That too was a delicate, fair face.

~ Omar Khayyám

I began a poem in lines of one syllable. It's rather difficult, but the merit of all things lies in their difficulty. The subject matter is gallant. I'll read you the first canto; it's four hundred verses long and takes one minute.

~ Alexandre Dumas

I wanted to write some words you'd remember.Words so alert they'd leap from the paper,crawl up your shoulder, lie by your ears,and purr themselves to you like baby kittens,but it was rainy, so I laid there and daydreamed about you.

~ C.l. Foster

When When it’s over, it’s over, and we don’t know any of us, what happens then.So I try not to miss anything.I think, in my whole life, I have never missed The full moonor the slipper of its coming back.Or, a kiss.Well, yes, especially a kiss.

~ Mary Oliver

Most people are much better at saying things in letters than in conversation, and some people can write artistic, inventive letters, but when they try a poem or story or novel they become pretentious.

~ Charles Bukowski

Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde, te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo: así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera, sino así de este modo en que no soy ni eres, tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía, tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.

~ Pablo Neruda

The first kiss and the first glass of wine are the best.

~ Marty Rubin

where some god pissed a rain of reason to make things grow only to die

~ Charles Bukowski

I will turn human anatomy into roses and stars and sea. I will dissect the beloveds body in metaphor.

~ Siri Hustvedt

Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may last!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

At first first nothing will happen to usand later on it will happen to us again.

~ Leonard Cohen

So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan which movesTo that mysterious realm where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.Thanatopsis

~ William Cullen Bryant

DogfishI wantedThe past to go away, I wantedTo leave it, like another country; I wantedMy life to close, and openLike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song Where it fallsDown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,Whoever I was, I wasAliveFor a little while.…mostly, I want to be kind.And nobody, of course, is kind,Or mean,For a simple reason.And nobody gets out of it, having to Swim through the fires to stay inThis world.

~ Mary Oliver

Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were behind you, like the winter that has just gone by. For among these winters there is one so endlessly winterthat only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

You are not worthless. Even if you've been called that your entire life.

~ Kevin Walker

Poetry is as necessary to comprehension as science. It is as impossible to live without reverence as it is without joy.

~ Henry Beston

as some strings, untouched,sound when no one is speaking.So it was when love slipped inside us.

~ Jane Hirshfield

There's a book of poetryin the lines of my handsthat no one wants to read

~ Holly Schindler

Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music, without the idea, is simply music; the idea, without the music, is prose, from its very definitiveness.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts and confusions, are written for the love of man and in Praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't.

~ Dylan Thomas

The campus, an academy of trees,under which some hand, the wind's I guess,had scattered the pale lightof thousands of spring beauties,petals stained with pink veins;secret, blooming for themselves.We sat among them.Your long fingers, thin body,and long bones of improbable genius;some scattered gene as Kafka must have had.Your deep voice, this passing dust of miracles.That simple that was myself, half conscious,as though each moment was a pagewhere words appeared; the bent hammer of the typestruck against the moving ribbon.The light air, the restless leaves;the ripple of time warped by our longing.There, as if we were paintedby some unknown impressionist.

~ Ruth Stone

. . .because we had survivedsisters and brothers, daughters and sons,we discovered bones that rosefrom the dark earth and sangas white birds in the treesBecause the story of our lifebecomes our lifeBecause each of us tells the same storybut tells it differentlyand none of us tells it the same way twice . . (from, Why We Tell Stories)

~ Lisel Mueller

Base words are uttered only by the baseAnd can for such at once be understood;But noble platitudes — ah, there's a caseWhere the most careful scrutiny is neededTo tell a voice that's genuinely goodFrom one that's base but merely has succeeded.

~ W.h. Auden

we want it visible to showwhen even the most visible joy will reveal itselfonly when we have transformed it within.there’s nowhere, my love, the world can existexpect within.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

In this universe there are no time machines or keys that can turn hearts back around.

~ Sarah Tregay

I could not have climbed any mountains while looking from the ground... I would not have flown... or dived... or surfed... or swum... I am not a tourist nor a spectator... this is the life I have left, and I will not waste it like some rubber-neck

~ Kem

I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not.

~ Philip Larkin

How can the bird that is born for joySit in a cage and sing?How can a child, when fears annoy,But droop his tender wing,And forget his youthful spring?

~ William Blake

Again I see you, But me I don't see!, The magical mirror in which I saw myself has been broken, And only a piece of me I see in each fatal fragment - Only a piece of you and me!...

~ Fernando Pessoa

The muffled syllables that Nature speaksFill us with deeper longing for her word; She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,She makes a sweeter music than is heard.

~ George Santayana

This is where I belong, burning in these flames. For everything I have done wrong, I know I am to blame.

~ Atarah L. Poling