Poetry Quotes: Verses to Inspire and Enchant (Page 3)

"I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose = words in their best order; - poetry = the best words in the best order"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet

"Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Poet

"Versatility of education can be found in our best poetry, but the depth of mankind should be found in the philosopher"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"Poetry lies its way to the truth"

John Ciardi, Dramatist

"Women do not have as great a need for poetry because their own essence is poetry"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"Women are treated as unjustly in poetry as in life. The feminine ones are not idealistic, and the idealistic not feminine"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"The poetry of this one is called philosophical, of that one philological, of a third rhetorical, and so on. Which is then the poetic poetry?"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"Mathematics is, as it were, a sensuous logic, and relates to philosophy as do the arts, music, and plastic art to poetry"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"If you want to see mankind fully, look at a family. Within the family minds become organically one, and for this reason the family is total poetry"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become; from what the ancients did, what poetry must be"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"Poetry fettered, fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed or flourish in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish"

William Blake, Poet

"A definition of poetry can only determine what poetry should be and not what poetry actually was and is; otherwise the most concise formula would be: Poetry is that which at some time and some place was thus named"

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel, Poet

"Wine is bottled poetry"

Robert Louis Stevenson, Writer

"Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth, which God has set in all men's souls"

James Russell Lowell, Poet

"The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch"

E. M. Forster, Novelist

"France is not poetic; she even feels, in fact, a congenital horror of poetry. Among the writers who use verse, those whom she will always prefer are the most prosaic"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"It is time to get drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of Time, get drunk; get drunk without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo"

Don Marquis, Journalist

"Poetry and progress are like two ambitious men who hate one another with an instinctive hatred, and when they meet upon the same road, one of them has to give place"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"It is the hour to be drunken! to escape being the martyred slaves of time, be ceaselessly drunk. On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, as you wish"

Charles Baudelaire, Poet

"I am two fools, I know, for loving, and for saying so in whining poetry"

John Donne, Poet

"Why should poetry have to make sense?"

Charlie Chaplin, Actor

"If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy"

Muhammad Iqbal, Poet

"Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy"

Muhammad Iqbal, Poet

"No, what I should really like to do right now, in the full blaze of lights, before this illustrious assembly, is to shower every one of you with gifts, with flowers, with offerings of poetry - to be young once more, to ride on the crest of the wave"

Knut Hamsun, Author

"I have had much to learn from Sweden's poetry and, more especially, from her lyrics of the last generation"

Knut Hamsun, Author

"In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well"

Paul Valery, Poet

"Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poet

"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, Poet

"Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poet

"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poet

"When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep"

Patti Smith, Musician

"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, Poet

"Prose on certain occasions can bear a great deal of poetry; on the other hand, poetry sinks and swoons under a moderate weight of prose"

Walter Savage Landor, Poet

"The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does"

Allen Ginsberg, Poet

"I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator"

Allen Ginsberg, Poet

"Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility"

William Wordsworth, Poet

"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason"

Novalis, Poet

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