Poetry Quotes

[P]oetry resembles metaphysics: one does not mind one's own, but one does not like anyone else's.

~ Samuel Butler

...if you do not even understand what words say, how can you expect to pass judgement on what words conceal?

~ H.d.

Even the moon is only poetical because there is a man in the moon.

~ G.k. Chesterton

My heart was full of softening showers,I used to swing like this for hours,I did not care for war or death,I was glad to draw my breath.

~ Stevie Smith

[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.

~ Anne Carson

A poet must discover that it’s his own story that is true, even if the truth is small indeed.

~ Jim Harrison

A violent order is disorder, and a great disorder is an order.These two things are one.

~ Wallace Stevens

I came here to be for all and with all,and what I do today in my solitudewill be echoed tomorrow by the multitude.What I say now with one heartwill be said tomorrow by thousands of hearts...

~ Kahlil Gibran

It was not like everyone had said.Not like being needed,or needing; not desperate;it did not whisperthat I'd come to harm. I didn't losemy head. No, I was notgoing to leap from a greatheight and flapmy wings.It was in factthe opposite of flying:it contained the wishto be toppled, to be on the floor,the ground, anywhere I mightlie down. . . .On my back, and you on me.

~ Deborah Garrison

a joy that hurts with sadnessa sadness that is pleasurablea pleasure full of terrora terror that excitesan excitement that calmsa calmness that frightens.

~ Aidan Chambers

Shit is disgusting and horrible. A lot of people and things are disgusting and horrible, and I want to be a nice person, and I am. When you are speaking about rejected people whose suffering makes them disgusting, you are speaking about shit. I do not mean that we should all eat shit and love what we can’t help rejecting. I am saying that I tried to do that, just to see if it was possible.It’s not possible.

~ Ariana Reines

Pensar incomoda como andar à chuvaQuando o vento cresce e parece que chove mais.

~ Alberto Caeiro

We are each what never leaves us, what we never seethe back ofis the self. But what loves usis at the back, as Eurydice wasescorting him outwithout his knowing.

~ Christina Davis

in the afterglowof an evening raini lay downin the grass and think of youmy body acheslike an after-kissbreaking in soft firesand wildflowersmy dear, i will always bethis tender for you.

~ Sanober Khan

i'm glad to be alive in a world wherehis gently awakening eyesnourish the morning sun.

~ Sanober Khan

a silent night. - the most eloquent poem i have ever read.

~ Sanober Khan

Maple. MaypoleCatch and carry.Ash and Ember.Elderberry.Woolen. Woman.Moon at night.Willow. Window.Candlelight.Fallow farrow.Ash and oak.Bide and borrow.Chimney smoke.Barrel. Barley.Stone and stave.Wind and water.Misbehave.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

Let your love flow where the beautiful things are and something beautiful will always come your way.

~ Robert M. Drake

Poems can getsleepless tooand becomethe loneliest thingin the universe.

~ Sanober Khan

I have no riches but my thoughts, Yet these are wealth enough for me

~ Sara Teasdale

Let me remember you, soon will the winter be on us,Snow-hushed and heartless.

~ Sara Teasdale

I will try to disappoint youbetter than anyone else has.

~ Stephen Dunn

And in the end,she left a scarand I knew that washow she wanted tobe remembered.She wanted to leaveher mark in theworldwithout gettingher heart tooattached to it.

~ Robert M. Drake

By the craggy hill-side,Through the mosses bare,They have planted thorn-treesFor pleasure here and there.If any man so daringAs dig them up in spite,He shall find their sharpest thornsIn his bed at night.

~ William Allingham

Go then, O my inseperable, this once more

~ Donald Justice

On the shining yards of heavenSee a wider dawn unfurled. . . . The eternal slaves of beautyAre the masters of the world.

~ Bliss Carman

There have been times I've felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.

~ Criss Jami

What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,That my songs do not show me at all?For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,I am an answer, they are only a call

~ Sara Teasdale

Every poet has his dream reader: mine keeps a look out for curious prosodic fauna like bacchics and choriambs.

~ W.h. Auden

what if I fall? oh, my darling, but if you fly?

~ Erin Hanson

The business of love is cruelty which,by our wills, we transform to live together.

~ William Carlos Williams

I had a dove and the sweet dove died; And I have thought it died of grieving: O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied, With a silken thread of my own hand's weaving.

~ John Keats

Slogans are mere wordsuck...

~ Gabriel Thy

O, how this spring of love resemblethThe uncertain glory of an April day,Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,And by and by a cloud takes all away!

~ William Shakespeare

If Springtime crawls out of thewild mouths of flowers, thensurely, Winter crawls out of mine.

~ Cecilia Llompart

‎I was satisfied with haiku until I met you, jar of octopus, cuckoo's cry, 5-7-5, but now I want a russian novel, a 50-page description of you sleeping, another 75 of what you think staring at your window.

~ Dean Young

How they had dreamed together, he and she... how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry.

~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?''I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls.

~ John Fowles

I do not write poetry, I take words and dip them in feelings.

~ Arti Honrao

Some who grow dull religious straight commenceAnd gain in morals what they lose in sense.

~ Alexander Pope