Quotes Tagged "poets-and-poetry"

Reason respects the differences, and imagination the similitudes of things.

A drainless shower of light is poesy; 'tis the supreme of power; 'tis might half slumb'ring on its own right arm.

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 and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the Inquisition might have let him alone.

In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.

One of Wordsworth's Lake District neighbours remarked, upon hearing of the poet's death "I suppose his son will carry on the business."

Poetry is not a profession, it's a destiny.

Poetry is the language of a state of crisis.

Poetry must be as new as foam, and as old as the rock.

Poets and painters are outside the class system, or rather they constitute a special class of their own, like the circus people and the gypsies.

The mind that finds its way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its way back is the lunatic's.

When a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work, it is constantly amalgamating disparate experiences.

When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down my dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems effectively but their shape and lustre have been given by the attrition of ages.

I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either.

The essentials of poetry are rhythm, dance and the human voice.

Colour, which is the poet's wealth, is so expensive that most take to mere outline sketches and become men of science.

A poet dares to be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.

Most joyful let the Poet be, it is through him that all men see.

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those that do.