Famous Quotes

All a poet can do today is warn.

~ Wilfred Owen

Poems are difficult to silence.

~ Stephen Greenblatt

These Songs are not meant to be understood, you understand.They are only meant to terrify & comfort.

~ John Berryman

Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?

~ George Orwell

The townspeople took the prince for deadWhen he never returned with the dragon’s headWhen with her, he stayedShe thought he’d be too afraidBut he loved her too much instead.

~ Jess C. Scott

The Author To Her BookThou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,Who after birth did'st by my side remain,Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,Who thee abroad exposed to public view,Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).At thy return my blushing was not small,My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.I cast thee by as one unfit for light,The visage was so irksome in my sight,Yet being mine own, at length affection wouldThy blemishes amend, if so I could.I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.In better dress to trim thee was my mind,But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,And take thy way where yet thou art not known.If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;And for thy mother, she alas is poor,Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.

~ Anne Bradstreet

... imaginary gardens with real toads in them ...... if you demand on one hand,the raw material of poetry inall its rawness andthat which is on the other handgenuine, then you are interested in poetry.

~ Marianne Moore

I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.

~ Oscar Wilde

There's no retirement for an artist,its your way of living so theres no end to it.

~ Bono

It's not what you go through that makes you strong: it is how you handle the situation that gives you strength.

~ Tanya R. Liverman

Love does not claim materialistic possession of any kind, it yields complete freedom.

~ Santosh Kalwar

From the mind which thinks to die, let my soul sleep tonight.

~ Santosh Kalwar

At breakfast!' said Louise in an awed voice. 'A man who can read poetry at breakfast would be capable of anything.

~ Mary Stewart

Do not turn me intorestless watersif you cannot promiseto be my stream.

~ Sanober Khan

The Ogre does what ogres can,Deeds quite impossible for Man,But one prize is beyond his reach:The Ogre cannot master speech.About a subjugated plain,Among it's desperate and slain,The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,While drivel gushes from his lips.

~ W.h. Auden

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

~ John Clare

Outside the youth center, between the liquor storeand the police station,a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;overflowing with blossomfoam,like a sudsy mug of beer;like a bride ripping off her clothes,dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.It’s been doing that all week:making beauty,and throwing it away,and making more.

~ Tony Hoagland

all right buddah gets a backstage pass but all his friends have to pay

~ Jim Carroll

The Pekes and the Pollicles, everyone knows, Are proud and implacable, passionate foes;It is always the same, wherever one goes.And the Pugs and the Poms, although most people saythat they do not like fighting, will often displayEvery symptom of wanting to join in the fray.And theyBark bark bark bark bark barkUntil you can hear them all over the park.

~ T.s. Eliot

But to go to school in a summer morn,O! It drives all joy away;Under a cruel eye outworn,The little ones spend the dayIn sighing and dismay.

~ William Blake

MiaowConsider me.I sit here like Tiberius,inscrutable and grand.I will let I dare notwait upon I wouldand bear the twanglingof your small guitarbecause you are my owland foster me with milk.Why wet my paw?Just keep me in a bagand no one knows the truth.I am familiar with witchesand stand a better chance in hell than youfor I can dance on hot bricks,leap your heightand land on all fours.I am the servant of the Living God.I worship in my way. Look into these slit green stonesand follow your reflected lights into the dark.Michel, Duc de Montaigne, knew.You don't play with me.I play with you.

~ Mark Haddon

don't wait for the man standing in the snowto cut off his arm help him now

~ Ikkyu

The pure playfulness of certain wholly whimsical portions of (Charles) Cros’s work should not obscure the fact that at the center of some of his most beautiful poems a revolver is leveled straight at us.

~ André Breton

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