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Quotes about poetry

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I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
Walt Whitman1819–1892Song of Myself (1855), Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Song of Myself, 52In context
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), Line 1In context
If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.
John F. Kennedy1917–1963Remarks at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts (14 June 1956)
- Politics
There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Sir Walter Scott (1838)
The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James1842–1910Collected Essays and Reviews (1920), Ch. 11—Clifford’s Lectures and Essays (1879)
- Science
The crown of literature is poetry.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Essays in Criticism, second series (1888), Count Leo Tolstoi
The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash, or thunder in.
Dylan Thomas1914–1953Poetic Manifesto (1951)
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare1564–1616Sonnet 18 (1609), Sonnets (1609), XVIIIIn context
I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.
Michael Faraday1791–1867Lecture notes of 1858, quoted in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) by Bence Jones, Vol. 2, p. 403
- Facts
Christmas and Easter can be subjects for poetry, but Good Friday, like Auschwitz, cannot. The reality is so horrible, it is not surprising that people should have found it a stumbling block to faith.
W. H. Auden1907–1973A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970), “Friday, Good”
- Christianity
Every great poem is in itself limited by necessity, — but in its suggestions unlimited and infinite.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807–1882Table-Talk (1857)
The joy and function of poetry is, and was, the celebration of man, which is also the celebration of God.
Dylan Thomas1914–1953Poetic Manifesto (1951)
- God
I don’t know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They’re always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Teddy (1953)
‘Paradise Lost’ is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
- Reading
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden1907–1973Another Time (1940)
- Life & Death