Top 631 Verse Quotes & Sayings

Explore popular Verse quotes.
Last updated on April 20, 2025.
If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.
I think everything should be in verse. 'The New York Times' should be in verse.
What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose — © Philip Pullman
What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose
That prose is a verse, and verse is a prose; convincing all, by demonstrating plain – poetic souls delight in prose insane
Guys that preach verse-by-verse through books of the Bible - that is just cheating. It's cheating because that would be easy, first of all. That isn't how you grow people. No one in the Scripture modeled that.
The first two books that I did by myself were long stories in verse. I knew I could do that because I'd written a lot in verse. But, verse stories are hard to sell, so my editor encouraged me to try writing in prose.
With a lot of songs on this record, one verse doesn't relate to the next verse. I don't think that one day really relates to the next day in life.
In a lot of African music, the singers are just singing whatever they feel at the time - because the instrumentation is repetitive, they can come and go as they please. That's how we approach it. Not verse-chorus-verse.
Everything that's prose isn't verse and everything that isn't verse is prose. Now you see what it is to be a scholar!
Fifteen years ago, God unequivocally and undeniably gave me Isaiah 22:22 as a life-verse. "Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, when he opens no one will shut, when he shuts no one will open." After 40 plus confirmations over a two-week period - yes, more than 40 - I became thoroughly convinced this verse was both a promise and a weapon for me. I have since used the verse hundreds of times throughout America - in all 50 states and in Washington DC - to open and close spiritual doors for the Lord.
I love writing songs. One of the toughest things is structure; it just works when you use verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. And as soon as you become aware of that formula, you start to have a bad conscience when you write with that particular structure.
There is the question of language. Although the play [Candid] is not written in strict verse form, there is an underlying beat of rhyming couplets, with echoes of Pope and the tradition of eighteenth-century philosophical verse.
Many times, though, when people feel as if The Uni-verse has abandoned them, the truth is that they have abandoned their dreams, and as a result they have abandoned The Uni-verse. What we think is being done TO US, we are actually doing TO ourselves. It's a totally crazy reversal that is true most of the time.
The summer lasted a long long time, like verse after verse of a ballad, but when it ended, it ended like a man falling dead in the street of heart trouble. One night, all in one night, severe winter came, a white horse of snow rolling over Bountiful, snorting and rolling in its meadows, its fields.
Any artist that's as serious about making music as I am, I'm cool with that. But if you tellin' me, "Man, send me a verse and I'ma send you a verse." No. That's not collaborating. We don't know each other and I'm serous about this music.
Verse by verse, the Bible becomes more than theory. It becomes my firsthand experience.
BLANK-VERSE, n. Unrhymed iambic pentameters - the most difficult kind of English verse to write acceptably; a kind, therefore, much affected by those who cannot acceptably write any kind.
You know, if you use instrument, why, you have to stay on perfect time - timing. And if you do a cappella - I'm so bad, just wonder, you know, maybe I'll sing one verse this way and one verse another. And if you're doing it a capella, you don't have to keep any time. You can just go out as far as you want to with it.
I was a poet too; but modern taste Is so refined and delicate and chaste, That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms, Without a creamy smoothness has no charms. Thus, all success depending on an ear, And thinking I might purchase it too dear, If sentiment were sacrific'd to sound, And truth cut short to make a period round, I judg'd a man of sense could scarce do worse Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.
Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols. — © John Donne
Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.
Like a good song, life has verses, the goliards had taught me. Each verse has to be sung. It takes all of them to make a song. It is the entire chanson you name, but when you think of it, when you smile, it is a favorite verse that delights your ears.
I love the verse in Job, where it says a man deserves the devotion of his friends even when he forsakes the Almighty. Now what that verse means to me is, even if I were to say, right now I don't believe in God. I still need you to be my friend, and say, I can believe God for you right now. I'm going to hold you up while you are ranting and railing, and God can handle my ranting and railing because He certainly handled David's and Job's and so many others.
I've always written pop songs. I tend to take inspiration from more experimental genres, like ambient music, but at the root of the song, it's verse-chorus-verse.
One of my main problems with music is that the basic formula is always the same: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, verse, chorus, chorus, chorus, end. One of the bands that changed that was The Beatles. If you listen to 'Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey.' It's three verses, bridge, end.
Verse in itself does not constitute poetry. Verse is only an elegant vestment for a beautiful form. Poetry can express itself in prose, but it does so more perfectly under the grace and majesty of verse. It is poetry of soul that inspires noble sentiments and noble actions as well as noble writings.
Whatever you think The Uni-verse is withholding from you, YOU are withholding from The Uni-verse. If you think that The Uni-verse isn't answering your prayers, chances are you aren't listening to your intuition and following it. You are so scared that you ask for new intuition, but that's not how life works. The Uni-verse is constantly whispering to you, nudging you to trust It and take a leap. But if you don't take the leap of faith, then The Uni-verse can't open any more doors for you.
I didn't know how write a song, (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, bridge, verse), etc., and I didn't know how to write lyrics, so that's when I thought, well, I don't have to write a song with all those verses and choruses or lyrics. I can just sing everything the way I want to. So I sang all the instruments with my voice and just went with it.
If there is any verse that you would like left out of the Bible, that is the verse that ought to stick to you, like a blister, until you really attend to its teaching.
Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!
Here, then, is a simple rule of thumb for all of us to apply: If the words of Jesus challenge something I believe or challenge the way I live, the problem is not with Jesus. The problem is with me. Charles Spurgeon expressed this in broader, scriptural terms when he said, “If there is any verse that you would like left out of the Bible, that is the verse that ought to stick to you, like a blister, until you really attend to its teaching.”31
The real challenge of writing songs isn't just writing a bunch of parts - like a verse, chorus, verse - but making something that flows together, that brings you back.
Let not a single day pass without your learning a verse, half a verse, or a fourth of it, or even one letter of it; nor without attending to charity, study and other pious activity.
Free verse seemed democratic because it offered freedom of access to writers. And those who disdained free verse would always be open to accusations of elitism, mandarinism. Open form was like common ground on which all might graze their cattle - it was not to be closed in by usurping landlords.
At four lines, with the quatrain, we reach the basic stanza form familiar from a whole range of English poetic practice. This is the length of the ballad stanza, the verse of a hymn, and innumerable other kinds of verse.
A song just doesn't have verse-chorus-verse. It could just be one line. There are Chinese love songs that you have to learn one melody for a three-minute thing, and nothing ever repeats. I like that.
You relax within the verse. You realize the structure of the verse and relax into it. It's like swimming. Or riding a bike. You can't make it sound real if you are thinking it through as you go. You can't think through Shakespeare, you have to speak it. And listen to the rhythm of it and then it takes you over. And to make it sound real you speak as if you believe it. Don't act it. Just be it.
If I can quote myself, I explained whatever it is I'm doing once for No Tell Motel, and I still think it's the clearest I've ever been about this: "I don't write free verse poems - mostly because I can't. But I am interested in the musical effects achievable with free verse."
There is a real formula to writing music, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. It's very formulaic. The subject matter that you can address in pop music is somewhat restricted. It just doesn't allow that same emotive quality that you can put into poetry.
When the Beatles wrote 'Paperback Writer,' it couldn't have been the same old thing. You can hear so many influences in it, from the blues to Bach, and it's not just verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge chorus. They start off singing a cappella, almost like a Bach chorale, and the song goes into this bluesy guitar riff.
It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore, he uses free verse - though free verse is no guarantee against banality.
'Are 'Friends' Electric?' was two songs: the verse part and the talking part. Two different songs I couldn't finish. One day I was playing the main verse part of 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' and after a few minutes I got frustrated, as normal, then started to play the other song, and realized they went together.
I compelled myself all through to write an exercise in verse, in a different form, every day of the year. I turned out my page every day, of some sort - I mean I didn't give a damn about the meaning, I just wanted to master the form - all the way from free verse, Walt Whitman, to the most elaborate of villanelles and ballad forms. Very good training. I've always told everybody who has ever come to me that I thought that was the first thing to do.
I remember Bumpy Knuckles came in wearing all mink everything and said, 'Yo, when I spit my verse, I gotta pull my guns out and aim them.' He was serious! I told him that I was going to duck in the event that those guns accidentally went off. He pulled out the twin glocks, spit his verse in one take and said, 'I've got a meeting to go to' and left!
My own verse is usually free verse. The freer the better. — © L. Ron Hubbard
My own verse is usually free verse. The freer the better.
Sometimes I write from the end of the verse to the beginning of the verse.
I write a lot of children's verse and I think it delights in the language. It pleases people. It's very musical. It's very lyrical and that's certainly a very important aspect of poetry. But I think that a lot of it is verse. I write well-wrought verse.
Faith greatly shaped America's role in the world. We are a country that embodies the Bible verse from Luke chapter 12, verse 48 "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded."
Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer Said once about the long toil that goes like blood to the poems making? Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls, Limp as bindweed, if it break at all Life's iron crust Man, you must sweat And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build Your verse a ladder.
The immediate success of the war poem anthologies ... proved that the war had aroused in a new public an ear for contemporary verse ... There has never before, in the world's history, been an epoch which has tolerated and even welcomed such a flood of verse as has been poured forth over Great Britain during the last three years.
The simple Wordsworth . . . / Who, both by precept and example, shows / That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose.
Songs start with my bringing in the basic riffs for what you might call a verse and a chorus, an A and a B part...whatever. And sometimes a C and even a D. That's kind of the easy, or at least easier part. The hard part is finding that special, perfect way to order things - how many times to do A before B and back and how the second verse differs from the first. That's all we got.
In her verse, she says: 'It's me and Karol G, and we let the rats talk.' I died, I revived, I died and revived again until I understood Nicki Minaj had said my name in her verse.
I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.
Don't talk to me any more about poetry for months -- unless it is other men's work. I really love verse, even rubbish. But I'm fearfully busy at a novel, and brush all the gossamer of verse off my face.
A verse came to mind, one that has comforted Kari before. It was the shortest verse in the Bible: Jesus wept. If he cried over Jerusalem, if he cried over the death of Lazarus, surely he was crying now over the death of her dreams, the death of her marriage.
Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse. — © Robert W. Service
Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.
What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose.
There are some pop songs I hate but I can't get them out of my head. Our songs also have the standard pop format: Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, solo, bad solo. All in all, I think we sound like The Knack and the Bay City Rollers being molested by Black Flag and Black Sabbath.
The real Stephen Colbert is a practicing Catholic. He teaches Sunday school. He can recite chapter and verse of chapter and verse - from both the King James Bible and 'The Lord of the Rings.'
I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.
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