Poetry Quotes
Some people go to priests others to poetry I to my friends.Virginia
Poetry cannot be translated; and, therefore, it is the poets that preserve the languages; for we would not be at the trouble to learn a language if we could have all that is written in it just as well in a translation. But as the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language.Johnson
We pass the word around; we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry; we meditate over the literature; we play the music; we change our minds; we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail (1979)
Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.Stephen Leacock, 1912
Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine arts; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest to reach true perfection.E. C. Stedman
All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.G. K. Chesterton, Defendant (1901)
I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.T. S. Eliot
Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.Henrik Ibsen, Norweigen Playwright
What is important - what lasts - In another language is not what is said but what is written. For the essence of an age, we look to its poetry and its prose, not its talk shows.Peter Brodie
A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Courtly love - Poetry may first have been written during long periods of abstinence on the Crusades, but it would not have flourished in the cold of northern Europe without some help from the chimney.James Burke
There is no money in poetry, but then there is no poetry in money either.Robert Graves
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.Kahlil Gibran
All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.Oscar Wilde
The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life.Jean Giraudoux
Since the printing press came into being, poetry has ceased to be the delight of the whole community of man; it has become the amusement and delight of the few.John Masefield
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.Socrates, In "Apology, " sct. 21, by Plato.
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.Simonides
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.Martin Luther King, Jr.
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled poets to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.Socrates
We have more poets thatnjudges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to write an indifferent poem that to understand a good one.Michel de Montaigne
Sooner of later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heartfelt truth. The true poet is very near the oracle.Edward Hubbell Chaplin
Poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake.Lord Byron
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.Martin Luther King, Jr.
We pass the word around we ponder how the case is put by different people, we read the poetry we meditate over the literature we play the music we change our minds we reach an understanding. Society evolves this way, not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other.Lewis Thomas
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.T. S. Eliot
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.Bertrand Russell
Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream - A scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows - Is essentially poetry.Jesse Louis Jackson
I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.Russell Bake
The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music.Donald E. Knuth
Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.John Keats
Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.Adrian Mitchell
You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.Mario Cuomo
The adventitious beauty of poetry may be felt in the greater delight with a verse given in a happy quotation than in the poem.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.Robert Frost
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.John Adams
