Great Quote about Poetry to Motivate and Inspire Your Day

Filed in Quote by on May 4, 2022

– Quote About Poetry –

Here is a selection of quotes about poetry by well-known poets and writers. The quotes can serve as motivation for poets who are working on their own works.

Quotes about Poetry

Poetry is not an expression of emotion, but an escape from feeling; it is not a personality expression, but a personality escape.

Here are line numbers of quote about poetry.

1. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” —T.S. Eliot

2. “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

3. “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

4. “I’m a great believer in poetry out of the classroom, in public places, on subways, trains, on cocktail napkins. I’d rather have my poems on the subway than around the seminar table at an MFA program.” —Billy Collins

5. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” —Emily Dickinson

6. “It was at that age, that poetry came in search of me.” —Pablo Neruda

7. “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” —Virginia Woolf

8. “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” —Charles Baudelaire

9. “Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” —Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel

10. “Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.” —Mahmoud Darwish

11. “Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.” —A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

12. “Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.” —June Jordan

13. “Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.” —Robert Frost

14. “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” —Carl Sandburg

15. “Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief—everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.” —F. Sionil Jose

16. “Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” —Lawrence Ferlinghetti

17. “Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.” —Yevgeny Yevtushenko

18. “Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness.” —Alice Walker

19. “Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.” —W.H. Auden

20. “Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far so fast in such a small space; you’ve got to burn away all the peripherals.” —Sylvia Plath

21. “Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it begins as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.” —Mary Oliver

22. “The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.” —Margaret Atwood

23. “The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.” —Jean Cocteau

24. “The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.” —James Gates Percival

25. “To me, art begets art. Painting feeds the eye just as poetry feeds the ear, which is to say that both feed the soul.” —Susan Vreeland

26. “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

27. “He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.” — George Sand, from The Devil’s Pool.

28. “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

29. “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” — Robert Graves

Poem Lines

The number of lines in a poem is usually divided into stanzas, or verses, which are named by the number of lines.

30. “Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.” — Thomas Hardy

31. “Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.” — Carl Sandburg

32. “Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity—it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.” — John Keats

33. “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

34. “It is a test [that] genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” — T. S. Eliot

35. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” — William Wordsworth

36. “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” — William Butler Yeats

37. “‘Therefore’ is a word the poet must not know.” — Andre Gide

38. “I would define … the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty.” — Edgar Allan Poe

39. “Poetry … is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own.” — Salvatore Quasimodo

40. “A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer… He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.” — E. B. White

41. “The poet is the priest of the invisible.” — Wallace Stevens

42. “A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” — Oscar Wilde

43. “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” – Robert Frost

44. “The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.” – Dr. Seuss

45. “Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley

46. “Poetry is an act of peace. Peace goes into the making of a poet as flour goes into the making of bread.” – Pablo Neruda

47. “There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.” – Robert Graves

48. “Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.” – Dylan Thomas

49. “A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” – Oscar Wilde

50. “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it. Is there any other way?” – Emily Dickinson

51. “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” – Carl Sandburg

52. “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” – Robert Frost

53. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity.” – William Wordsworth

54. “The poetry of the earth is never dead.” – John Keats

55. “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

56. “Well, write poetry, for God’s sake, it’s the only thing that matters.” – E.E. Cummings

57. “Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem tittle  must ride on its own melting.” – from the essay, “The Figure a Poem Makes” – Robert Frost

58. “I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.” – Edgar Allan Poe

59. “This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” – Henry David Thoreau

60. “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” —Rita Dove

Craft Quotes

This quote about poetry will give you more confidence when it comes to craft, continue reading to get more inspiration. 

61. “Craft is the vehicle for expressing your vision. Craft is the visible edge of art.” – David Bayles.

62. “Almost all creativity requires purposeful play.” – Abraham Maslow

63. “Art is not a handicraft, it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.” – Leo Tolstoy.

64. “We love the things we love for what they are.” ― Robert Frost

65. “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.” ― Kahlil Gibran

66. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” ― Mary Oliver

67. “I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.” ― Sarah Williams

68. “Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.”― Leonardo da Vinci

69. “Resist much, obey little.” ― Walt Whitman

70. “Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.”― E. E. Cummings

71. “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”― Robert Frost

72. “Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” ― G.K. Chesterton

73. “What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.”― Walt Whitman

74. “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.” ― Sylvia Plath

75. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” ― T.S. Eliot

76. “Let our scars fall in love.” ― Galway Kinnell

77. “This is the way the world endsNot with a bang but a whimper.” ― T.S. Eliot

78. “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee And I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.” ― Robert Frost

79. “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

80. “You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face” ― Ian Fleming

81. “Always be a poet, even in prose.” ― Charles Baudelaire

82. “And then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?” ― Vincent Willem van Gogh

83. “If you have the words, there’s always a chance that you’ll find the way.” ― Seamus Heaney

84. “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” ― Charles Baudelaire

85. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” ― Robert Frost

86. “I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it.” ― William Shakespeare

87. “Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” ― Charles Bukowski

88. “What a strange thing! to be alive beneath cherry blossoms.” ― Kobayashi Issa

89. “We shall not cease from exploration, And the end of all our exploring, Will be to arrive where we started, And know the place for the first time.” ― T. S. Eliot

90. “I have drunken deep of joy, And I will taste no other wine tonight.” ― Percy Bysshe Shelley

Praise Quotes

Quotes like such are usually power poetry  which give praise to a God or person on power, see more Quote About Poetry.

91. “Praise and worship is such a powerful device is able to dismantle every shackle and its able to breakdown every wall.”― Euginia Herlihy

92. “Our praise builds up equity in Heaven” ― Pastor Rod W. Larkins

93. “May the story of my life be found as worship in your eyes.” ― Carol Tetzlaff

94. “May the story of my life be found as worship in your eyes.”― Carol Tetzlaff

95. “Summer night even the stars are whispering to each other.” ― Kobayashi Issa

96. “Lovers alone wear sunlight.” ― E.E. Cummings

97. “Break a vase, and the love that reassembles the fragments is stronger than that love which took its symmetry for granted when it was whole.” ― Derek Walcott

98. “listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go” ― E.E. Cummings

99. “Separation Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.” ― W.S. Merwin

100. “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” ― Novalis

101. “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” ― Dylan Thomas

102. “Once, poets were magicians. Poets were strong, stronger than warriors or kings — stronger than old hapless gods. And they will be strong once again.” ― Greg Bear

103. “I may not always be with you But when we’re far apart Remember you will be with me Right inside my heart” ― Marc Wambolt,

104. “Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other. ” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

105. “Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” ― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

106. “I know you’re tired but come, this is the way.” ― Jalalu’l-din Rumi

107. “Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.” ― Wallace Stevens

108. “Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” ― Virginia Woolf

109. “Music is the universal language of mankind.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

110. “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

111. “Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.” ― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

112. “Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.” ― Jack Kerouac

113. “April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.”― T.S. Eliot

114. “Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)” ― William Shakespeare

115. “Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.” ― William Faulkner

116. “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

117. “Closed in a room, my imagination becomes the universe, and the rest of the world is missing out.”― Criss Jami

118. “some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.” ― Charles Bukowski

119. “Live not for Battles Won. Live not for The-End-of-the-Song. Live in the along.” ― Gwendolyn Brooks,

120. “I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” ― Arthur Rimbaud

Deep Poetry Quotes

Here is more Quote About Poetry that would spice up your day.

121. “The poetry of the earth is never dead.” ― John Keats

122. “I am no longer in love with her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her. Love is so short, forgetting is so long.” ― Pablo Neruda

123. “The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

124. “Poetry is just so emo.” he said. “Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.” ― John Green

125. “Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.”‒ Carol Ann Duffy

126. “I should have loved a thunderbird instead; At least when spring comes they roar back again.” ‒ Sylvia Plath

127. “Love one another, but make not a bond of love, Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” ― Khalil Gibran

130. “may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone.” ― E.E. Cummings

131. “Peace is always beautiful.” ― Walt Whitman

132. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” ‒ Pablo Neruda

133. “The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.” ― W.H. Auden

134. “Poetry, she thought, wasn’t written to be analyzed; it was meant to inspire without reason, to touch without understanding.” ― Nicholas Sparks

135. “life’s not a paragraph, And death i think is no parenthesis”― E.E. Cummings

136. “We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames, we are all just stars that have people names.” ― Nikita Gill, Quote About Poetry.

137. “With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

138. “If I can see pain in your eyes then share with me your tears. If I can see joy in your eyes then share with me your smile.” ― Santosh Kalwar

139. “Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.” ― Janet Fitch

140. “Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”― Kahlil Gibran

141. “It was at that age that poetry came in search of me.”― Pablo Neruda

142. “I went down to the river, I set down on the bank. I tried to think but couldn’t, So I jumped in and sank.”― Langston Hughes

143. “You remember too much, my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that? And I said, Where can I put it down?” ― Anne Carson

144. “I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I’m here.” ― Sylvia Plath

145. “You will always be the bread and the knife, not to mention the crystal goblet and—somehow—the wine.” ― Billy Collins

146. “I discover self love on the verge of a usual mistake.” ― Walt Whitman

147. “Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”― Pablo Neruda

148. “I carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)” ― E.E. Cummings

149. “It is strange how often a heart must be broken Before the years can make it wise.” ― Sara Teasdale

150. “My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”― Ursula K. Le Guin

Quotations Poetry

Quotations poetry are listed below to give you a mind blow and also give you more quote about poetry. 

151. “I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.” ― Anne Sexton,

152. “I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.” ― William Blake

153. “If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.” ― Richard Siken

154. “The heart can think of no devotion Greater than being shore to the ocean- Holding the curve of one position, Counting an endless repetition.” ― Robert Frost

155. “the saddest thing is to be a minute to someone, when you’ve made them your eternity.” ― Sanober Khan

156. “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

157. “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.” ― W.H. Auden

158. “Of two sisters one is always the watcher, one the dancer.” ― Louise Glück

159. “I hunger for your sleek laugh and your hands the color of a furious harvest. I want to eat the sunbeams flaring in your beauty.” ― Pablo Neruda, Quote About Poetry.

160. “What can be explained is not poetry.” ― W.B. Yeats

161. “Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we petty men Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves.” ― William Shakespeare

162. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” ― John Keats

163. “You are never too old to become younger!” ― Mae West

164. “I give you this to take with you: Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.” ― Judith Minty

165. “The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.” ― Aberjhani

166. “That night when you kissed me, I left a poem in your mouth, and you can hear some of the lines every time you breathe out.” ― Andrea Gibson

167. “You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.” ― Wystan Hugh Auden

168. “It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.” ― George Eliot

169. “Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

170. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.”― John Keats

171. “We ran as if to meet the moon.” ― Robert Frost, Quote About Poetry.

172. “I love you because no two snowflakes are alike, and it is possible, if you stand tippy-toe, to walk between the raindrops.” ― Nikki Giovanni

173. “Five minutes are enough to dream a whole life, that is how relative time is.” ― Mario Benedetti

174. “To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

175. “We are made of all those who have built and broken us.” ― Atticus Poetry

176. “Twice I have lived forever in a smile” ― E.E. Cummings

177. “Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.” ― William Shakespeare

178. “Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.” ― Anne Sexton

179. “The glory of Christianity is to conquer by forgiveness.” ― William Blake

180. “A truth should exist, it should not be used like this. If I love you is that a fact or a weapon?” ― Margaret Atwood

Poets of the World

Quote About Poetry are famous quote which people in the world at large engage in.

181. “One need not be a chamber to be haunted.” ― Emily Dickinson

182. “For darkness restores what light cannot repair.” ― Joseph Brodsky

183. “She conquered her demons and wore her scars like wings. ” ― Atticus Poetry

184. “Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running away from them.” ― Nikita Gill

185. “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”― Walt Whitman

186. “Listen, real poetry doesn’t say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.” ― Jim Morrison

187. “To hide feelings when you are near crying is the secret of dignity.” ― Dejan Stojanovic

188. “I am two fools, I know, For loving, and for saying so.” ― John Donne

189. “Every angel is terrifying.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

190. “Truth can never be told so as to be understood and not be believed.” ― William Blake

191. “Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.” ― Edgar Allen Poe

192. “A fragment for my friend, If your soul left this earth I would follow and find you Silent, my starship suspended in night” ― Emily St. John Mandel, Quote About Poetry.

193. “Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” ― Cassandra Clare,

194. “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” ― Pablo Neruda

195. “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent” ― Victor hugo

196. “There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it” ― Gustave Flaubert

197. “Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.” ― W.H. Auden

198. “My turn shall also come, I sense the spreading of a wing.” ― Osip Mandelstam

199. “I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder” ― Lawrence Ferlinghetti

200. “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.”― Robert Frost

201. “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” ― Leonard Cohen

202. “Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. ” ― Edna St. Vincent Millay

203. “Without you I’d be an unleafed tree Blasted in a bleakness with no Spring.” ‒ Daniel Hoffman

204. “My heart leaps up when I behold A Rainbow in the sky…” ‒ William Wordsworth

205. “I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive.” ‒ Billy Collins

We believe this listed famous quote about poetry had a great start impact on you, do well to introduce your friends as you share these interesting quotes.  

CSN Team.

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