Poetry Quotes
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
Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.Adrian Mitchell
The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.Frederick William Robertson
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.William Wordsworth
Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.Simonides
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.Kahlil Gibran
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 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.
There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.Oscar Wilde
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement.Christopher Fry
Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.Henry David Thoreau
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
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.Charles Simic
A vein of poetry exists in the hearts of all men.Thomas Carlyle
The greatest poem is not that which is most skillfully constructed, but that in which there is the most poetry.L. Schefe
All slang is a metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.G. K. Chesterton, Defendant (1901)
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.John Ruskin
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.
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
Any healthy man can go without food for two days - - But not without poetry.Charles Baudelaire
Poetry is an art, and chief of the fine arts; the easiest to dabble in, the hardest to reach true perfection.E. C. Stedman
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
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.
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
It is written on the arched sky It looks out from every star It is the poetry of Nature It is that which uplifts the spirit within us.John Ruskin
I know that poetry is indispensable, but to what I could not say.Jean Cocteau
Poetry is to hold judgment on your soul.Henrik Ibsen, Norweigen Playwright
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
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
