Quotes about poetry and poets

"Teach you children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary."

Scott, Sir Walter on poetry and poets   

"Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world."

Shelley, Percy Bysshe on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds."

Shelley, Percy Bysshe on poetry and poets   

"The poet speaks to all men of that other life of theirs that they have smothered and forgotten."

Sitwell, Dame Edith on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is an art, the easiest to dabble in, but the hardest to reach true excellence."

Stedman, Captain J. G. on poetry and poets   

"The poet is the priest of the invisible."

Stevens, Wallace on poetry and poets   

"No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else."

Temple, Sir William on poetry and poets   

"Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it."

Thoreau, Henry David on poetry and poets   

"Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech."

Thoreau, Henry David on poetry and poets   

"War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull."

Twain, Mark on poetry and poets   

"Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you --like music to the musician or Marxism to the Communist --or else it is nothing, an empty formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations."

Unknown, Source on poetry and poets   

"Poetry doesn't belong to those who write it, but to those who need it."

Unknown, Source on poetry and poets   

"A poem is never finished, only abandoned."

Valery, Paul on poetry and poets   

"It is as impossible to translate poetry as it is to translate music."

Voltaire on poetry and poets   

"Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read."

Voltaire on poetry and poets
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"This poem will never reach its destination. [On Rousseau's Ode To Posterity]"

Voltaire on poetry and poets   

"A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it."

White, Elwyn Brooks on poetry and poets   

"A poet can survive anything but a misprint."

Wilde, Oscar on poetry and poets   

"But all art is sensual and poetry particularly so. It is directly, that is, of the senses, and since the senses do not exist without an object for their employment all art is necessarily objective. It doesn't declaim or explain, it presents."

Williams, William Carlos on poetry and poets   

"The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mold of the body and mind."

Woolf, Virginia on poetry and poets   

"It’s not easy to write a poem about a poem. "

Stojanovic, Dejan on poetry and poets   

"Great poets are great copy editors. "

Stojanovic, Dejan on poetry and poets   

"Why poetry, you ask? Because of life, I answer. "

Stojanovic, Dejan on poetry and poets   

"To write good poems is the secret of brevity. "

Stojanovic, Dejan on poetry and poets