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Quotes about poetry

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You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
John Adams1735–1826Letter to John Quincy Adams (14 May 1781)
- Reading
Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1451b.6
- History
For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle384–322 BCPoetics, 1461b.11
- Writing
The crown of literature is poetry.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Essays in Criticism, second series (1888), Count Leo Tolstoi
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
For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Introduction to Ward’s English Poets (1880)
- Religion
Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888Essays in Criticism (1865), “Heinrich Heine”
The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject.
Matthew Arnold1822–1888On Translating Homer: Last Words (1862)
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
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden1907–1973Another Time (1940)
- Life & Death
All poets adore explosions, thunderstorms, tornadoes, conflagrations, ruins, scenes of spectacular carnage. The poetic imagination is not at all a desirable quality in a statesman.
W. H. Auden1907–1973The Dyer’s Hand, and Other Essays (1962)
- Politics
I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!
Jane Austen1775–1817Pride and Prejudice (1813), Volume I, Chapter IXIn context
- Love
Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.
Philip James Bailey1816–1902Festus (1839), Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
- Love
The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils’ party without knowing it.
William Blake1757–1827The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793)
Poetry Fetter’d. Fetters the Human Race. Nations are Destroy’d, or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry, Painting, and Music are Destroy’d or Flourish!
William Blake1757–1827Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820)
- Art
- Music