Quotes about poetry
A collection of quotes on the topic of poetry, can, likeness, poet.
Total 1427 quotes, filter:
„He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.“
— George Orwell, book Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying
— Geoffrey Hill English poet and professor 1932 - 2016
Interview, The Paris Review No. 80, Spring 2000 http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/730/the-art-of-poetry-no-80-geoffrey-hill
— Ernest Flagg American architect 1857 - 1947
Source: Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922), Ch. II
— Osip Mandelstam Russian poet and essayist 1891 - 1938
Quoted in Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970), ch. 35
„Pure mathematics is in its way the poetry of logical ideas.“
— Albert Einstein German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity 1879 - 1955
1930s, Obituary for Emmy Noether (1935)
Context: Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas. One seeks the most general ideas of operation which will bring together in simple, logical and unified form the largest possible circle of formal relationships. In this effort toward logical beauty spiritual formulas are discovered necessary for the deeper penetration into the laws of nature.
„one can never be sure whether it's good poetry or bad acid“
— Charles Bukowski, book Love Is a Dog from Hell
Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell
„Only poetry or madness could do justice to the noises…“
— H.P. Lovecraft American author 1890 - 1937
„The poetry of earth is never dead.“
— John Keats English Romantic poet 1795 - 1821
" Sonnet. On the Grasshopper and the Cricket http://www.bartleby.com/126/28.html"
Poems (1817)
„There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality“
— Richard Dawkins English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author 1941
The Enemies of Reason, "Slaves to Superstition" [1.01], 13 August 2007, timecode 00:38:16ff
The Enemies of Reason (August 2007)
Variant: Science is the poetry of reality.
Context: The word 'mundane' has come to mean boring and dull, and it really shouldn't. It should mean the opposite because it comes from the latin 'mundus', meaning the world, and the world is anything but dull; the world is wonderful. There's real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality.
— Marion Woodman Canadian writer 1928 - 2018
Source: Bone: Dying into Life (2000), p. 165
„After a full belly all is poetry.“
— Frank McCourt Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer 1930 - 2009
— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel German poet, critic and scholar 1772 - 1829
Was sich thun lässt, so lange Philosophie und Poesie getrennt sind, ist gethan und vollendet. Also ist die Zeit nun da, beyde zu vereinigen.
“Ideas,” Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 108
— Jorge Luis Borges Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature 1899 - 1986
"Poetry" (1977)
„He who has no poetry in himself will find poetry in nothing.“
— Joseph Joubert French moralist and essayist 1754 - 1824
„Poetry is written with tears, fiction with blood, and history with invisible ink.“
— Carlos Ruiz Zafón, book The Angel's Game
Source: The Angel's Game
— Thomas Mann German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate 1875 - 1955
Source: Death in Venice and Other Tales
„Our tragic age demands poetry of courage and not whimpers about the inevitable end of all maya.“
— Mulk Raj Anand Indian writer 1905 - 2004
Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,
— Jericho Brown American writer 1976
On his poems being likened to powder kegs in “Jericho Brown: ‘Poetry is a veil in front of a heart beating at a fast pace” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jul/28/jericho-brown-book-interview-q-and-a-new-testament-poetry in The Guardian (2018 Jul 28)
— Yukio Mishima, book Runaway Horses
Source: Runaway Horses
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/06/02/books/book-reviews/yukio-mishimas-demons-full-force-runaway-horses/ note: Runaway Horses (1969)
— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
— T.S. Eliot, book Tradition and the Individual Talent
Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919)
Context: The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." 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.
— Sita Ram Goel Indian activist 1921 - 2003
Muslim Separatism – Causes and Consequences (1987)
„There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.“
— John Cage American avant-garde composer 1912 - 1992
„I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it.“
— John Cage American avant-garde composer 1912 - 1992
"Lecture on Nothing" (1949)
1940s
„Poetry is a lyrical insinuation. Often, its melodic subtlety kisses the subconscious mind.“
— Masiela Lusha Albanian actress, writer, author 1985
LaGuardia, Gina (October 2004). "Masiela's Musings". College Bound Teen (USA): p. 2.
„Poetry is to prose as dancing is to walking.“
— Paul Valéry French poet, essayist, and philosopher 1871 - 1945
„If a poem hasn't ripped apart your soul; you haven't experienced poetry.“
— Edgar Allan Poe American author, poet, editor and literary critic 1809 - 1849
„Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination.“
— Max Planck German theoretical physicist 1858 - 1947
As quoted in Advances in Biochemical Psychopharmacology, Vol. 25 (1980), p. 3
„We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.“
— Niels Bohr Danish physicist 1885 - 1962
In his first meeting with Werner Heisenberg in early summer 1920, in response to questions on the nature of language, as reported in Discussions about Language (1933); quoted in Defense Implications of International Indeterminacy (1972) by Robert J. Pranger, p. 11, and Theorizing Modernism : Essays in Critical Theory (1993) by Steve Giles, p. 28
Context: We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
„We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.“
— Umberto Eco, book Foucault's Pendulum
Source: Foucault's Pendulum
— Emily Dickinson American poet 1830 - 1886
Letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1870), letter #342a of The Letters of Emily Dickinson (1958), edited by Thomas H. Johnson, associate editor Theodora Ward, page 474
Source: Selected Letters
„Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.“
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti American artist, writer and activist 1919
Source: Poetry as Insurgent Art
„Poetry must find ways of breaking distance.“
— Giannina Braschi, book Yo-Yo Boing!
Yo-Yo Boing! (Spanglish novel, 1998)
Context: If I respected languages like you do, I wouldn't write at all. El muro de Berlín fue derribado. Why can't I do the same? Desde la torre de Babel, las lenguas han sido siempre una forma de divorciarnos del resto de la humanidad. Poetry must find ways of breaking distance. I'm not reducing my audience. On the contrary, I'm going to have a bigger audience with the common markets — in Europe — in America. And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds. I feel like Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, and I even feel like Garcilaso forging a new language. Saludo al nuevo siglo, el siglo del nuevo lenguaje de América, y le digo adiós a la retórica separatista y a los atavismos.
— Eugène Boudin French painter 1824 - 1898
Diary-note of Boudin, 3 December, 1856; as cited in the description of his painting 'Sky, Setting Sun, Bushes in Foreground' http://www.muma-lehavre.fr/en/collections/artworks-in-context/eugene-boudin/boudin-skies, by the Muma-museum, Le Havre
A quote from Boudin's personal diary sheds remarkable light on a small group of his sky studies
1850s - 1870s
„Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.“
— Leonard Cohen Canadian poet and singer-songwriter 1934 - 2016
„Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.“
— Cassandra Clare, book Clockwork Angel
Source: Clockwork Angel
„Poetry, it's one of the most pretty nicknames we give to life.“
— Jacques Prevért French poet, screenwriter 1900 - 1977
Attributed
— Gaston Bachelard French writer and philosopher 1884 - 1962
A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire (1988)
— Leonardo Da Vinci Italian Renaissance polymath 1452 - 1519
A Treatise on Painting (1651); "The Paragone"; compiled by Francesco Melzi prior to 1542, first published as Trattato della pittura by Raffaelo du Fresne (1651)
Context: Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. These two arts, you may call them both either poetry or painting, have here interchanged the senses by which they penetrate to the intellect.
„Real poetry, is to lead a beautiful life. To live poetry is better than to write it.“
— Bashō Matsuo Japanese poet 1644 - 1694
— Juan Antonio Villacañas Spanish poet, essayist and critic 1922 - 2001
"New Songs for After the Tears", from Revolt of a Newborn (1973)
„If pain does not die
we shall make it poetry.“
— Juan Antonio Villacañas Spanish poet, essayist and critic 1922 - 2001
From Sublimation of Disobedience (1998)
— Charles Darwin British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection" 1809 - 1882
Source: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82
— César Vallejo Peruvian writer 1892 - 1938
Las artes (pintura, poesía, etc.) no son solo éstas. Artes son también comer, beber, caminar: todo acto es un arte.
Source: Aphorisms (2002), p. 60
„Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.“
— Jack Kerouac American writer 1922 - 1969
„… and then, I have nature and art and poetry, and if that is not enough, what is enough?“
— Vincent Van Gogh Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890) 1853 - 1890
— John Ruskin, book Modern Painters
Volume III, part IV, chapter XVI (1856).
Modern Painters (1843-1860)
„Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality.“
— Andrei Tarkovsky, book Sculpting in Time
Source: Sculpting in Time
— Steve Jobs American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc. 1955 - 2011
interview in Playboy magazine (February 1985 http://www.playboy.co.uk/article/16311/playboy-interview-steven-jobs) <!-- alternate link : http://gizmodo.com/5694765/29+year+old-steve-jobs-extols-californias-virtues-to-playboy-magazine -->
1980s
Context: Woz and I very much liked Bob Dylan's poetry, and we spent a lot of time thinking about a lot of that stuff. This was California. You could get LSD fresh made from Stanford. You could sleep on the beach at night with your girlfriend. California has a sense of experimentation and a sense of openness—openness to new possibilities.
„Poetry is the shadow cast by our imaginations.“
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti American artist, writer and activist 1919
These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems, 1955-1993 (New Directions) ISBN: 0-0112-1273-4 0-0112-1252-1
„A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.“
— José Martí Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader 1853 - 1895
Dedication of the Statue of Liberty (1887)
Source: Versos Sencillos: Simple Verses
— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
„Love is poetry plus biology.“
— Lawrence Durrell British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer 1912 - 1990
„Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.“
— Robert Frost American poet 1874 - 1963
Variant: Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
— Emily Giffin American writer 1972
Source: Love the One You're With
„It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.“
— George Eliot, book Middlemarch
Source: Middlemarch
— Umberto Eco Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist 1932 - 2016
Source: Postscript to the Name of the Rose
„Any healthy man can go without food for two days--but not without poetry.“
— Charles Baudelaire French poet 1821 - 1867
„I am composed of contradictions, which is why poetry is a better form for me than philosophy“
— Czeslaw Milosz Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator 1911 - 2004
„Poetry: three mismatched shoes at the entrance of a dark alley.“
— Charles Simic American poet 1938
Source: Dime-Store Alchemy
„We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.“
— Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist 1844 - 1900
— Denise Levertov Poet 1923 - 1997
O Taste and See : New Poems (1964), The Secret
Source: Poems, 1960-1967
