Top 1200 Greatest Poetry Quotes & Sayings - Page 4

I don't believe in tame poetry. . . . Poetry busts guts.

I'm an actress, primarily. I love to write poetry. I've been writing poetry since I was 12 years old.

Why speak of the use of poetry? Poetry is what uses us.

The experience of poetry could bring my mother back to me. Poetry offers a different kind of solace - here on earth.

Poetry, especially traditional Iranian poetry, is very good at looking at things from a number of different angles simultaneously.

Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.

I began to write poetry when I was about four years old. In other words, I've always been writing poetry.

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable.

I'm a poetry-skipper myself. I don't like to boast, but I have probably skipped more poetry than any other person of my age and weight in this country - make it any other two persons. This doesn't mean that I hate poetry. I don't feel that strongly about it. It only means that those who wish to communicate with me by means of the written word must do so in prose.

The theoretician believes in logic and believes that he despises dreams, intuition, and poetry. He does not recognize that these three fairies have only disguised themselves in order to dazzle him.... He does not know that he owes his greatest discoveries to them.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

I think the culture can absorb so many people writing poetry and trying to earn their living in poetry.

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords.

Many other cultures value poetry more than we do. In Ireland, poetry is a top cultural pursuit, the art to end all arts.

A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize that ideal.

To be honest, I wasn't crazy about the kind of poetry I found in high school English books. I didn't get really excited about poetry until I discovered Lorca in college. If it wasn't for surrealism, I'm not sure I'd have become so involved in poetry. I was attracted by the extravagant imagery and elements of fantasy. This was in the '70s and it seemed to fit the psychedelic mood of the times. I found it liberating.

Poetry is not an issue of form and enjambments. Poetry, as the word is classically used, has to do with sound and sense. It can be rhyme. It can be rhythm, pace, breath.

To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.

I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation.

Eloquence is heard; poetry is overheard ... All poetry is of the nature of the soliloquy.

Music has a poetry of its own, and that poetry is called melody.

I've done a number of readings at poetry lounges in Vancouver and Los Angeles. I've compiled a book of poetry that's completed, and two others I'm working on.

Poetry, from describing external events objectively, is becoming subjectified into a poetry of personal conscious expression.

In my life, I've seen enormous increase in the consumption of poetry. When I was young, there were virtually no poetry readings.

I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do.

I feel in poetry there aren't that many rules that you need to absolutely live by depending on your style of poetry.

The trouble with poetry is that it encourages the writing of more poetry.

The Divine Comedy is a political poem and when you say poetry is not about - he's always quoted out of context, that "poetry makes nothing happen," that doesn't mean you shrug your shoulders and don't try to make anything happen. And Dante felt that poetry was engaged, there was a point of view; it's not my point of view, it's orthodox medieval Christianity, and I have my troubles with that. He didn't feel that you could just rule out so important a section of life - we care about these things, and it's out of caring about them that we write poetry.

The greatest pride, or the greatest despondency, is the greatest ignorance of one's self.

[The story of Adam and Eve] it's poetry. One must interpret it as poetry. The first 11 chapters of Genesis [the Primeval History] are absolutely remarkable.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

The rules or 'laws' of poetry are only tentative devices, an approximate scheme. There is no Sinaitic recipe for poetry, for the individual poem is the norm.

People who publish poetry today do it from a sense that poetry needs to be published, not because they think they are going to make money.

Don't you think that as a people, Americans have less poetry, real poetry, in their souls than any other nations?

All my closest friends came to me through poetry. My wife, too! Other than my family, poetry is the gravitational force of my life.

My verses are my diary. My poetry is a poetry of proper names.

By friendship you mean the greatest love, the greatest usefulness, the most open communication, the noblest sufferings, the severest truth, the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds which brave men and women are capable.

Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.

Of all the early breakthrough rock and roll artists, none is more important to the development of the music than Chuck Berry. He is its greatest songwriter, the main shaper of its instrumental voice, one of its greatest guitarists, and one of its greatest performers.

I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine.

Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs.

If you like the precision and concision of poetry, a page of prose is unsatisfying in a certain way. And poetry is so direct.

Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be 'the expression of the imagination': and poetry is connate with the origin of man.

My life's purpose is to write poetry - but behind the poetry must be the vision of a fresh revelation for men.

Any reflection about poetry should begin, or end, with this question: who and how many read poetry books?

Poetry can be dangerous, especially beautiful poetry, because it gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it.

The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay ... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us.

Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.

The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins.

I think of poetry as something out there in the world and within each of us. I don't mean that everyone can write poetry - it's an art, a craft, it requires enormous commitment like any art. But there's a core of desire in each of us and poetry goes to and comes from that core. It's the social, economic, institutional gap that makes it difficult.

There is such a thing as the poetry of a mistake, and when you say, "Mistakes were made," you deprive an action of its poetry, and you sound like a weasel.

I'm very attracted to poetry for all the reasons someone likes poetry. The notion of compression seems to fit my personality.

I like what Wallace Stevens said: "Poetry must almost successfully resist intelligence." I just change the word "poetry" to "my photographs".

Poetry's unnat'ral; no man ever talked poetry 'cept a beadle on boxin' day.

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

I have been writing poetry ever since I was in high school. My poetry mainly concerned the theme of love. And that, of course, is an endless subject.

To me, photography is not just a visual art, but something closer to poetry - or at least to some poetry, such as the haiku.

I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best.