Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about poetry

150 quotes from 90 people

Most readBy personPage 4 of 10

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug’s game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965
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
The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious.
T. S. Eliot1888–1965Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), Part II
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Nature (1836), Nature
- Nature
I wish to write such rhymes as shall not suggest a restraint, but contrariwise the wildest freedom.
Ralph Waldo Emerson1803–1882Journal (27 June 1839)
- Freedom
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
Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.
Federico Fellini1920–1993I’m a Born Liar (2003), “Poets”
- Money
What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?
Richard Feynman1918–1988The Feynman Lectures on Physics, vol. I (1963), lecture 3, “The Relation of Physics to Other Sciences”, p. 3-6
- Science
Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert1821–1880Letters to Madame Louise Colet, 14 August 1853
A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself.
E. M. Forster1879–1970Two Cheers for Democracy (1951), “Anonymity: An Enquiry”
- Truth & Lies
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
Robert Frost1874–1963
A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Robert Frost1874–1963The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
Robert Frost1874–1963
A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.
Robert Frost1874–1963Letter to Louis Untermeyer (January 1, 1916)
Too many poets delude themselves by thinking that the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous and must be left in.
Robert Frost1874–1963Interview with with Harvey Breit of The New York Times Book Review. As quoted in the following source: Associated Press (30 January 1963). “Robert Frost Dies at 88