Poetry Quotes

And, I mean, I think poetry does need to be met to some extent, especially, I guess, 19th century poetry, and for me, it's just been so worth the effort. It's like I'm planting a garden in my head.

Jane Campion

The object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and the object, Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily attainable in prose.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Philosophy

Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.

Thomas Hardy

Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

Paul Engle

No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.

Sir William Temple

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

Mark Twain

The poets did well to conjoin music and medicine, because the office of medicine is but to tune the curious harp of man's body.

Francis Bacon

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content.

Alfred de Musset

Poetry does not consist of words alone there must be sentiment and fancy, combination and arrangement.

Samuel Prout

To know anything of a poet but his poetry is, so far as the poetry is concerned, to know something that may be entertaining, even delightful, but is certainly inessential.

John Drinkwater

The essence of poetry is will and passion.

William Hazlitt

The poetical impression of any object is that uneasy, exquisite sense of beauty or power that cannot be contained within itself; that is impatient of all limit; that (as flame bends to flame) strives to link itself to some other image of kindred beauty or grandeur; to enshrine itself, as it were, in the highest forms of fancy, and to relieve the aching sense of pleasure by expressing it in the boldest manner.

William Hazlitt

Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.

William Hazlitt

Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence.

Captain J. G. Stedman

The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind.

Virginia Woolf

Vigny, more secretAs if in his tower of ivory, retired before noon.N.B.: Vigny refers to Comte de Vigny, who locked himself in an ivory tower to work without the influences of man and desire.

Charles Augustin SainteBeuve, Pe

Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

Edgar Allan Poe

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

The poet is the priest of the invisible.

Wallace Stevens

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

Denis Diderot