Great Poet Quotes

• Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet. He must be a great original interpreter of his time, his day, his age.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Birthday, Meaningful, Falling Water

  Frank Lloyd Wright (1992). “Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings: 1931-1939”, Rizzoli Intl Pubns

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.

  Stephen Spender

  Poetry, Can Do, Written

  The New York Times, March 26, 1961.

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry: the best words in the best order.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Writing, Vocabulary, Prose Poetry

  Table Talk 12 July 1827 (1835)

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

  Leonard Cohen

  Writing, Poetry, Ashes

  "My favourite word in songwriting history is 'that'" by Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. May 31, 2007.

  39 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every great architect is - necessarily - a great poet.

  Frank Lloyd Wright

  Falling Water, Architecture, Poet

  FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (1953). “THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Writing, Reading Poetry

  The Sacred Wood "Philip Massinger" (1920)

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.

  Carl Sandburg

  Writing, Animal, Air

  Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.317, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A poem begins with a lump in the throat

  Robert Frost

  Inspirational, Writing, Poetry

  Robert Frost, Mark Richardson (2007). “The Collected Prose of Robert Frost”, p.84, Harvard University Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.

  Kenneth Rexroth

  Book, Son, Poetry

  33 Copy quote

• Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.

  Dennis Gabor

  Heart, Poetry, Poetic

  89 Copy quote

• If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

  Emily Dickinson

  Taken, Writing, Poetry

  Quoted in Martha Bianchi, Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To have great poets, there must be great audiences.

  Walt Whitman

  Learning, Science, Discovery

  Walt Whitman, Floyd Stovall (2007). “Prose Works 1892, Volume II: Collect and Other Prose”, p.521, NYU Press

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

  Robert Frost

  Poetry, Emotion, Found

  108 Copy quote

• The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Funny, Food, Sarcasm

  "Alarms And Discursions". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 1910.

  34 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

  William Wordsworth

  Powerful, Poetry, Feelings

  Lyrical Ballads 2nd ed., preface (1802) See Dorothy Parker 24

  178 Copy quote

  Show source

• Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, trees, flowers, water and love.

  Heinrich Heine

  Inspirational Love, Inspirational Life, Flower

  "Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine: I. Florentine Nights. II. Excerpts".

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Time, Men, Profound

  Biographia Literaria ch. 15 (1817)

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A fool, for example, thinks Shakespeare a great poet . . . yet the fool has never read Shakespeare.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Thinking, Example, Fool

  Edgar Allan Poe (2016). “Complete Works Of Edgar Allan Poe: The New Raven Edition”, p.758, ShandonPress

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Jewels, Poetic, Nations

  Ludwig van Beethoven (1868). “Letters from the Collection of Ludwig Nohl: Also His Letters to the Archduke Rudolph, Cardinal-Archbishop of Olmütz, K.W. from the Collection of Ludwig, Ritter Von Köchel. Translated by Lady Wallace, with a Portrait and Facsimile”, p.88

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Country, Poet, Universal

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1855). “The Works: Kavanagh. Outre-Mer”, p.69

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• There has never been a great poet who wasn't also a great reader of poetry.

  Edward Hirsch

  Poet, Reader

  10 Copy quote

• All great poetry is dipped in the dyes of the heart.

  Edith Sitwell

  Heart, Poetry, Great Poetry

  6 Copy quote

• All great poets have been men of great knowledge.

  William C. Bryant

  Men, Poet, Great Knowledge

  4 Copy quote

• Democritus maintains that there can be no great poet without a spite of madness.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Poetry, Excellence, Madness

  4 Copy quote

• To find beauty in the sad, hope in the midst of loss, and dignity in failure is great poetic art.

  David Mamet

  Art, Loss, Dignity

  9 Copy quote