Poetry Quotes: Verses to Inspire and Enchant

"It is the timber of poetry that wears most surely, and there is no timber that has not strong roots among the clay and worms"

John Millington Synge, Poet

"Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance"

Carl Sandburg, Poet

"Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas"

Albert Einstein, Physicist

"We don't attempt to have any theme for a number of the anthology, or to have any particular sequence. We just put in things that we like, and then we try to alternate the prose and the poetry"

James Laughlin, Poet

"Concrete poets continue to turn out beautiful things, but to me they're more visual than oral, and they almost really belong on the wall rather than in a book. I haven't the least idea of where poetry is going"

James Laughlin, Poet

"Poetry is of so subtle a spirit, that in the pouring out of one language into another it will evaporate"

John Denham, Politician

"I think Ginsberg has done more harm to the craft that I honor and live by than anybody else by reducing it to a kind of mean that enables the most dubious practitioners to claim they are poets because they think, If the kind of thing Ginsberg does is poetry, I can do that"

James Dickey, Novelist

"I wish you would read a little poetry sometimes. Your ignorance cramps my conversation"

Anthony Hope, Writer

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

"Personality is everything in art and poetry"

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Writer

"Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry"

Virginia Woolf, Author

"If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there - not because you've done a comedy performance but because you're talking about your father dying or having young children, things that touch your soul"

Roger McGough, Poet

"I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention"

Michael Graves, Architect

"Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it"

Vincent Van Gogh, Artist

"Nothing truly convincing - which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill - has been written against the ancients as yet; especially not against their poetry"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"The dance can reveal everything mysterious that is hidden in music, and it has the additional merit of being human and palpable. Dancing is poetry with arms and legs"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private"

Allen Ginsberg, Poet

"A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel"

Chaim Potok, Author

"Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved"

Jose Ortega Y Gasset, Philosopher

"I never think about poetry except when I'm writing it. I mean my poetry"

Norman MacCaig, Poet

"No art form points like poetry to this originality of language as to its essential and abiding concern"

Thomas Harrison

"We simply have not kept in touch with poetry"

Paul Muldoon, Poet

"But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me"

Peter Davison, Actor

"One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music"

Stephen Sondheim, Composer

"But for me, being an editor I've been an editor of all kinds of books being an editor of poetry has been the way in which I could give a crucial part of my time to what I love most"

Peter Davison, Actor

"How does one happen to write a poem: where does it come from? That is the question asked by the psychologists or the geneticists of poetry"

Allen Tate, Poet

"I published, privately, a collection of my serious poetry I had written over the years. I only published 50 copies, which I gave to friends, in a special deluxe edition. It was ridiculously expensive but I'm glad that I did it"

Tom Glazer, Musician

"Part of what we love about poetry is the fact that it seems ancient, that it has an authority of ancient language and ancient form, and that it's timeless, that it reaches back"

Robert Morgan, Soldier

"Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That's how I get my kicks"

Edward Koch, Politician

"The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it"

Robert Penn Warren, Novelist

"Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them"

Dennis Gabor, Scientist

"I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table"

Paul Auster, Author

"Nobody ever told me what to read, or ever put poetry in my way"

Isaac Rosenberg, Poet

"I wrote things for the school's newspaper, and - like all teenagers - I dabbled in poetry"

Stephen Colbert, Comedian

"I started off in England and very few people knew I was Australian. I mean, the clues were in the poems, but they didn't read them very carefully, and so for years and years I was considered completely part of the English poetry scene"

Peter Porter, Soldier

"Money is a kind of poetry"

Wallace Stevens, Poet

"I'm as much influenced by Joseph Smith and the Mormons as I am, more so, than by Eliot. Actually, I'm much more influenced by the poetry of the Mormons"

Marguerite Young, Author

"All the modern verse plays, they're terrible; they're mostly about the poetry. It's more important that the play is first"

Denis Johnson, Writer

"Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature"

David Hare, Playwright

"The poetry from the eighteenth century was prose; the prose from the seventeenth century was poetry"

David Hare, Playwright

Page 1 of 16