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Quotes about poetry

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Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
A drainless shower
Of light is poesy; ’tis the supreme of power;
’Tis might half slumb’ring on its own right arm.
John Keats1795–1821Poems (1817)
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during a moment.
Carl Sandburg1878–1967“Tentative (First Model) Definitions of Poetry”, in Complete Poems (1950)
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1451b.6
- History
He that thinks himself capable of astonishing may write blank verse: but those that hope only to please must condescend to rhyme.
Samuel Johnson1709–1784Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence; because he has no identity — he is continually informing — and filling some other body.
John Keats1795–1821To Richard Woodhouse (27 October 1818)
People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them — that does not occur to them.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 36e
- Art
- Music
Wonder is not a disease. Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
Alan Watts1915–1973Inside Information p. 7
- Art
Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946Geography and Plays (1922), “Sacred Emily”
Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.
Federico Fellini1920–1993I’m a Born Liar (2003), “Poets”
- Money
The central idea of poetry is the idea of guessing right, like a child.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936The Victorian Age in Literature (1913), Ch I: The Victorian Compromise and Its Enemies (p. 24)
The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it.
J. D. Salinger1919–2010Seymour: An Introduction (1959)
For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1461b.11
- Writing
Others abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask — Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888The Strayed Reveller, and Other Poems (1849), “Shakespeare”, l. 1
- Genius
Every great architect is — necessarily — a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.
Frank Lloyd Wright1867–1959The Future of Architecture (1953)
- Art