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Quotes about poetry

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‘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
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)
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)
The poetry of earth is never dead.
John Keats1795–1821Poems (1817)
- Nature
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)
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)
The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself.
John Keats1795–1821To James Hessey (9 October 1818)
- Genius
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
John Keats1795–1821On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer (1816)In context
- Reading
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
Real warriors like William Burroughs or Leonard Cohen or Wallace Stevens examine the hollow as well as anybody; they get in there, look far into the dark, and yet come out with poetry.
KKKen Kesey1935–2001The Paris Review interview (1994)
- Courage
Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse⁠—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness⁠—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.
Omar Khayyam1048–1131The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859)In context
- Happiness
- Love
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
Joyce Kilmer1886–1918Trees (1913)In context
- Nature
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Joyce Kilmer1886–1918Trees (1913)In context
- God
‘Tis verse that gives
Immortal youth to mortal maids.
Walter Savage Landor1775–1864“Verse” (“Past ruin’d Ilion Helen lives”)
Poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963Reflections on the Psalms