Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement… says heaven and earth in one word… speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.
—Christopher Fry (1907–2005) English Poet, Playwright
Spring has returned. The Earth is like a child that knows poems.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
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 (1795–1821) English Poet
The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten.
—Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) British Poet, Literary Critic
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
—Voltaire (1694–1778) French Philosopher, Author
The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it.
—Sylvia Plath (1932–63) American Poet, Novelist
The courage of the poets is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.
—Christopher Morley (1890–1957) American Novelist, Essayist
A beautiful line of verse has twelve feet, and two wings.
—Jules Renard (1864–1910) French Writer, Diarist
There is only beauty—and it has only one perfect expression—poetry. All the rest is a lie—except for those who live by the body, love, and, that love of the mind, friendship. For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.
—Stephane Mallarme (1842–98) French Symbolist Poet
A poet can survive anything but a misprint.
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish Poet, Playwright
A good poet’s made as well as born.
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English Dramatist, Poet, Actor
I cannot accept the doctrine that in poetry there is a “suspension of belief.” A poet must never make a statement simply because it is sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
Poetry is life distilled.
—Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American Poet , Writer
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 we have personality and emotion know what it means to want to escape from these things.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
—W. H. Auden (1907–73) British-born American Poet, Dramatist
I take as metaphysical poetry that in which what is ordinarily apprehensible only by thought is brought within the grasp of feeling, or that in which what is ordinarily only felt is transformed into thought without ceasing to be feeling.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
Poetry is indispensable—if I only knew what for.
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French Poet, Playwright, Film Director
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Poetry is a mere drug, Sir.
—George Farquhar (1677–1707) Irish Dramatist
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.
—Denis Diderot (1713–84) French Philosopher, Writer
I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.
—Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian Novelist
Each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate with shabby equipment always deteriorating in the general mess of imprecision of feeling.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.
—Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American Biographer, Novelist, Socialist
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 (1821–67) French Poet, Art Critic, Essayist, Translator
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 (1775–1864) English Writer, Poet
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. It finds the thought and the thought finds the words.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
—Diane Ackerman (b.1948) American Poet, Essayist, Naturalist
All one’s inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–80) French Novelist, Playwright, Short Story Writer
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