Poetry is often celebrated for its ability to encapsulate profound ideas and emotions in a succinct and artistic manner. Many people find solace, inspiration, and introspection through the power of poetry. Quotes about poetry offer glimpses into the beauty and significance of this art form, emphasizing its ability to touch the depths of human experience and provoke thought.
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. — Edgar Allan Poe
Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. — Thomas Gray
Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. — Paul Engle
Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing. — James Tate
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. — Novalis
Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary. — Kahlil Gibran
Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science — William Wordsworth
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. — Robert Frost
Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. — Dennis Gabor
Short Poetry Quotes
We were together. I forget the rest. — Walt Whitman
Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it. — Matsuo Basho
My idea is to bring happiness, respect, vision, poetry, surrealism and magic [to design]. — Philippe Starck
And gentle winds and waters near, make music to the lonely ear. — Lord Byron
All religion, my friend, is simply evolved out of fraud, fear, greed, imagination, and poetry. — Edgar Allan Poe
I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. — Archilochus
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. — Emily Dickinson
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know. — Banjo Paterson
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. — Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. — Carl Sandburg
Poetry Image Quotes
The best listeners listen between the lines.
Poetry uses the hub of a torque converter for a jello mold. — Diane Glancy
I have nature and art and poetry and if that is not enough, what is?
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. — Carl Sandburg
There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it — Gustave Flaubert
Let no-one say the past is dead, the past is all about us and within. — Oodgeroo Noonuccal
Poetry has done enough when it charms, but prose must also convince. — H. L. Mencken
Sad Poetry Quotes
Love itself is what is left over when being "in love" has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. — Louis de Bernieres
If you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned. — Joy Harjo
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life? That you are here - that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. — Walt Whitman
I believe that if I should die, and you were to walk near my grave, from the very depths of the earth I would hear your footsteps. — Benito Perez Galdos
I love the autumn for its sense of melancholy seems to strike my need for sadness. There is poetry in the dying of the year and mystery as well. — Kyffin Williams
Poetry, I think, intensifies the reader's experience. If it's a humorous facet of the story, poetry makes it more exuberant. If it's a sad facet, poetry can make it more poignant. — Vikram Seth
I give her sadness and the gift of pain,
a new moon madness and a love of rain. — Dorothy Parker
Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time,
Tiering the same dull webs of discontent,
Clipping the same sad alnage of the years. — Edwin Arlington Robinson
Poetry is a beautiful way of expressing feelings - happy, sad, angry, caring. It's also a way that we share with other people, to help them with those feelings. — Mattie Stepanek
I don't write poetry with the intention of making someone sad but rather to illustrate my own feelings and ideas. — James Dye
Dark Poetry Quotes
Yes, I read. I have that absurd habit. I like beautiful poems, moving poetry, and all the beyond of that poetry. I am extraordinarily sensitive to those poor, marvelous words left in our dark night by a few men I never knew. — Louis Aragon
Starry Starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land. — Don McLean
She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes. — Lord Byron
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep but I have promises to keep... — Robert Frost
Poetry operates by hints and dark suggestions. It is full of secrets and hidden formulae, like a witch's brew. — Anthony Hecht
Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley. — Charles Simic
A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why. — Percy Bysshe Shelley
I rhyme… to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. — Seamus Heaney
For the crown of our life as it closes Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust; No thorns go as deep as a rose's, And love is more cruel than lust. Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives. — Algernon Charles Swinburne
We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark, and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night. — Ursula K. Le Guin
Love Poetry Quotes
Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, 'you owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that! It lights up the whole sky. — Unknown Author
Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything. — David Bowie
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring. — Oscar Wilde
Love in the Arab world is like a prisoner, and I want to set (it) free. I want to free the Arab soul, sense and body with my poetry. The relationships between men and women in our society are not healthy. — Nizar Qabbani
What is Music? How do you define it? Music is a calm moonlit night, the rustle of leaves in Summer. Music is the far off peal of bells at dusk! Music comes straight from the heart and talks only to the heart: it is Love! Music is the Sister of Poetry and her Mother is sorrow! — Sergei Rachmaninoff
To be wild is not to be crazy or psychotic. True wildness is a love of nature, a delight in silence, a voice free to say spontaneous things, and an exuberant curiosity in the face of the unknown. — Robert Bly
I give you my hand, I give you my love more precious than money, I give you myself before preaching or law; Will you give me yourself? — Walt Whitman
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove Dance me to the end of love — Leonard Cohen
Neither poetry, nor ambition, nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me. — John Keats
For every poet it is always morning in the world; history a forgotten, insomniac night. The fate of poetry is to fall in love with the world in spite of history. — Derek Walcott
Writing Poetry Quotes
At the age when Bengali youth almost inevitably writes poetry, I was listening to European classical music. — Satyajit Ray
When you write a song, most of the words you use are in black and white, and then, from time to time, you use one that’s in color. These words in color are a part of ourselves, because we give them a meaning. If you like, we give them a third dimension. — Jacques Brel
Write, form a rhizome, increase your territory by deterritorialization, extend the line of flight to the point where it becomes an abstract machine covering the entire plane of consistency. — Gilles Deleuze
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes. — Carl Sandburg
A poem is never finished, only abandoned. — Paul Valery
It was commonplace for colleagues to write comic poetry to each other, predicting the manner in which they might die. — Oliver Burkeman
The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. — Dylan Thomas
I was a late bloomer. But anyone who blooms at all, ever, is very lucky. — Sharon Olds
Writing was a political act and poetry was a cultural weapon. — Linton Kwesi Johnson
Sometimes I wish I was poetic and subtle. I write very bold and blunt and tell it like it is. — Pink
What Is Poetry Quotes
If I could take your troubles
I would toss them into the sea,
But all these things I'm finding
Are impossible for me.
I cannot build a mountain
Or catch a rainbow fair,
But let me be what I know best,
A friend that is always there. — Kahlil Gibran
Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that. — Rumi
Carpe diem! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think. — Horace
...and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough? — Vincent Van Gogh
Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does. — Allen Ginsberg
As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing. — T. S. Eliot
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do. — Stephen Spender
What you have to realize when you write poetry, or if you love poetry, is that poetry is just naturally the greatest god damn thing that ever was in the whole universe — James Dickey
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. — T. S. Eliot
Beautiful Poetry Quotes
The small man builds cages for everyone he knows While the sage, who has to duck his head when the moon is low, Keeps dropping keys all night long For the beautiful rowdy prisoners. — Hafez
The harmony of the world is made manifest in Form and Number, and the heart and soul and all the poetry of Natural Philosophy are embodied in the concept of mathematical beauty. — D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
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
There is no longer beauty except in the struggle. No more masterpieces without an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault against the unknown forces in order to overcome them and prostrate them before men. — Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
In a time of destruction, create something: a poem, a parade, a community, a school, a vow, a moral principle; one peaceful moment. — Maxine Hong Kingston
Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it. — Rumi
Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd. — Thomas Mann
Lovers find secret places inside this violent world where they make transactions with beauty. — Rumi
My feeling is that poetry is also a healing process, and then when a person tries to write poetry with depth or beauty, he will find himself guided along paths which will heal him, and this is more important, actually, than any of the poetry he writes. — Robert Bly
I believe the world is beautiful, and poetry, like bread, is for everyone. — Roque Dalton
Time Poetry Quotes
Take 7 emcees put em in a line
And add 7 more brothers who think they can rhyme
It'll take 7 more before I go for mine
And that's 21 emcees ate up at the same time. — Rakim
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. — Anne Bradstreet
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves. — T. S. Eliot
Teachers should be very careful not to spoil their pupils' taste for poetry for all time by making it a task and an imposition. — Ernest Shackleton
There is no man more complete than the one who travelled a lot, who changed the shape of his thoughts and his life twenty times. — Alphonse De Lamartine
I read as much poetry as time allows and circumstance dictates: No heartache can pass without a little Dorothy Parker, no thunderstorm without W. H. Auden, no sleepless night without W. B. Yeats. — J. Courtney Sullivan
Children read to learn - even when they are reading fantasy, nonsense, light verse, comics or the copy on cereal packets, they are expanding their minds all the time, enlarging their vocabulary, making discoveries - it is all new to them. — Joan Aiken
Time is the coin of life. Only you can determine how it will be spent. — Carl Sandburg
The dance is the mother of the arts. Music and poetry exist in time; painting and architecture in space. But the dance lives at once in time and space. — Curt Sachs
The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation. — Michelle Obama
Poetry And Music Quotes
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. — Steven Pinker
Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow. — Kurt Vonnegut
Poetry teaches us music, metaphor, condensation and specificity. — Walter Mosley
I have to study politics and war so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce and agriculture, so their sons can study poetry, painting and music. — John Quincy Adams
As poetry is the harmony of words, so music is that of notes; and as poetry is a rise above prose and oratory, so is music the exaltation of poetry. — Henry Purcell
The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature. — Charles Darwin
Islamic culture has given us majestic arches and soaring spires; timeless poetry and cherished music; elegant calligraphy and places of peaceful contemplation. — Barack Obama
The only way to get change is not through the courts or - heaven forbid - the politicians, but through a change of human consciousness and through a change of heart. Only through the arts - music, poetry, dance, painting, writing - "can we really reach each other. — Leslie Marmon Silko
If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week. — Charles Darwin
One thing is certain, and I have always known it - the joys of my life have nothing to do with age. They do not change. Flowers, the morning and evening light, music, poetry, silence, the goldfinches darting about — May Sarton
Reading Poetry Quotes
It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry. — John Taylor Gatto
Reading poetry and watching cricket were the sum of my world, and the two are not so far apart as many aesthetes might believe. — Donald Bradman
People who read poetry have heard about the burning bush, but when you write poetry, you sit inside the burning bush. — Li-Young Lee
Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder. — Edward Hirsch
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. — Emily Dickinson
We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry. — Cassandra Clare
One good way to start writing poetry is to read all kinds of poetry: not just in order to imitate but to fill up your head with it, to absorb it, to make poetry an essential part of how you view the world. — Valerie Worth
We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. — Robin Williams
To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry. — Gaston Bachelard
Poem Quotes
New friends may be poems but old friends are alphabets. Don't forget the alphabets because you will need them to read the poems. — Unknown Author
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Listen with your heart, you will understand. — Pocahontas
Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others... And your very flesh shall be a great poem. — Walt Whitman
You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that fleeting moment when you feel alive. It is not for unsteady souls . — Merce Cunningham
If I can stop one heart from breaking…” Emily Dickinson If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. — Emily Dickinson
We cherish too, the Poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led,
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies. — Moina Michael
I’d cut my soul into a million different pieces just to form a constellation to light your way home. I’d write love poems to the parts of yourself you can’t stand. I’d stand in the shadows of your heart and tell you I’m not afraid of your dark. — Andrea Gibson
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him. — Dylan Thomas
The dance is a poem of which each movement is a word. — Mata Hari
Poetry Is Quotes
With the wild nature as ally and teacher we see not through two eyes but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. — William Wordsworth
The truth is... everything counts. Everything. Everything we do and everything we say. Everything helps or hurts; everything adds to or takes away from someone else. — Countee Cullen
If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her. — Odysseas Elytis
The cloning of humans is on most of the lists of things to worry about from Science, along with behaviour control, genetic engineering, transplanted heads, computer poetry and the unrestrained growth of plastic flowers. — Lewis Thomas
The fact is that poetry is not the books in the library . . . Poetry is the encounter of the reader with the book, the discovery of the book. — Jorge Luis Borges
When everything goes right a mobile is a piece of poetry that dances with the joy of life and surprise! — Alexander Calder
It is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an earthquake. — Lord Byron
I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I want to explore that are very disturbing. In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth. — Sayings
But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin. — Aldous Huxley
The attempt to divide art and politics is a bourgeois which says good poetry, art, cannot be political, but since everything is … political, even an artist or work that claims not to have any politics is making a political statement by that act. — Amiri Baraka
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. — John Steinbeck
Will you love me in December as you do in May,
Will you love me in the good old fashioned way?
When my hair has all turned gray,
Will you kiss me then and say,
That you love me in December as you do in May? — Jimmy Walker
What other people may find in poetry or art museums, I find in the flight of a good drive. — Arnold Palmer
I don't think you get to good writing unless you expose yourself and your feelings. Deep songs don't come from the surface; they come from the deep down. The poetry and the songs that you are suppose to write, I believe are in your heart. — Judy Collins
Good poetry is like effective prayer, it feeds the human spirit, it nourishes, it puts us in touch with forces far greater than ourselves — Lorna Goodison
I don't know a better preparation for life than a love of poetry and a good digestion. — Zona Gale
The Bible has noble poetry in it... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. — Mark Twain
You have to really dive deep back into yourself and get rid of so much modern analytical categorization. It's one of the great things poetry does. — Robert Morgan
Any great warrior is also a scholar, and a poet, and an artist. — Steven Seagal
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It is a great feeling to know that from a window I can go to books to cans of beer to past loves. And from these gather enough dream to sneak out a back door. — Gregory Corso
And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart [ i carry it in my heart ] — E. E. cummings
From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness,-a system in which the two great commandments were to hate your neighbour and to love your neighbour's wife. — Thomas B. Macaulay
The best poetry has its roots in the subconscious to a great degree. Youth, naivety, reliance on instinct more than learning and method, a sense of freedom and play, even trust in randomness, is necessary to the making of a poem. — May Swenson
Not all poetry wants to be storytelling. And not all storytelling wants to be poetry. But great storytellers and great poets share something in common: They had something to say, and did. — Sarah Kay
I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book. — Kenneth Rexroth
You know I have about the same interest in jewelry as I have in politics, horse racing, modern poetry, and women who need weird excitement – none. — Cary Grant
Too many people in the modern world view poetry as a luxury, not a necessity like petrol. But to me it's the oil of life. — John Betjeman
Most poetry is very formal, but when a modern poet is formal he gets more attention for it than old poets did. — Robert Lowell
High and low culture come together in all Post Modern art, and American poetry is not excluded from this. — Diane Wakoski
Modern poetry, for me, began not in English at all but in Spanish, in the poems of Lorca. — W. S. Merwin
The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved. — Franz Grillparzer
The reason modern poetry is difficult is so that the poet's wife cannot understand it. — Wendy Cope
I think that one possible definition of our modern culture is that it is one in which nine-tenths of our intellectuals can't read any poetry. — Randall Jarrell
I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published. — Sally Kirkland
The arts generally have had to recognize Modernism - how should poetry escape? — John C. Ransom
There comes a point in your life when you realize:
Who matters,
Who never did,
Who won't anymore,
And who always will.
So, don't worry about people from your past, there's a reason why they didn't make it to your future. — Adam Lindsay Gordon
Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky. — Rabindranath Tagore
I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills When all at once I saw a crowd A host of golden daffodils Beside the lake beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. — William Wordsworth
First they came for the Jews, but I did nothing because I'm not a Jew. Then they came for the socialists, but I did nothing because I'm not a socialist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did nothing because I'm not a Catholic. Finally, they came for me, but by then there was no one left to help me. — Martin Niemoller
..we wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes- this debt we pay to human guile; with torn and bleeding hearts we smile. — Paul Laurence Dunbar
All poets, all writers are political. They either maintain the status quo, or they say, 'Something's wrong, let's change it for the better.' — Sonia Sanchez
In Conclusion
These quotes often highlight the transformative and cathartic nature of poetry, as well as its ability to evoke strong emotions and ignite the imagination. They can serve as reminders of the importance of self-expression and the power of words to convey complex emotions and ideas. Quotes about poetry encourage us to appreciate the beauty of language and to explore the depths of our own inner worlds through the written word.
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Citation
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