Great Poetry Quotes

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

  Stephen Spender

  Poetry, Great Poet, Can Do

  The New York Times, March 26, 1961.

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• Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

  Samuel Johnson

  Art, Poetry, Uniting

  Samuel Johnson (1822). “The Lives of the Most Eminent Poets: With Critical Observations on Their Works”, p.120

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• Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Beauty, Thoughtful, Poetry

  "The Poetic Principle". Essay by Edgar Allan Poe, 1850.

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

  Robert Frost

  Poetry, Emotion, Found

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• To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Running, Attitude, Military

  "Ulysses" l. 65 (1842)

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• 

  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

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• You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.

  Joseph Joubert

  Poetry, Poetic

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• Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.

  Novalis

  Inspiring, Healing, Poetry

  "Quote, Unquote". Book by Jonathan Williams, p. 136, 1989.

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• Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

  Aristotle

  Nature, Poetry Is, Philosophic

  "Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation".

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• A poem is never finished, only abandoned.

  Paul Valery

  Inspirational, Life, Witty

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• Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.

  Carl Sandburg

  Dance, Writing, Echoes

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• Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beautiful, Mirrors, Poetry

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1840). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.33

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• Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Beauty, Poetry, World

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1994). “The Selected Poetry and Prose of Shelley”, p.52, Wordsworth Editions

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• Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.

  Thomas Gray

  Poetry, Poetic, Breathe

  'The Progress of Poesy' (1757) l. 110

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• Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

  Khalil Gibran

  Pain, Reading Poetry, Joy

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

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• Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

  Robert Frost

  Fire, Ice, Poetry

  "Fire and Ice" l. 1 (1923)

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• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Marriage, Sweet Love, Educational

  Sonnets from the Portuguese no. 43 (1850)

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• This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

  T. S. Eliot

  Death, Poetry, Religion

  "The Hollow Men" l. 95 (1925)

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• Poetry: the best words in the best order.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Writing, Vocabulary, Prose Poetry

  Table Talk 12 July 1827 (1835)

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• The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

  Jean Cocteau

  Poetry, Poetic, Invention

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• Poetry is a language in which man explores his own amazement.

  Christopher Fry

  Men, Prose And Poetry, Language

  Christopher Fry (1997). “The Early Days”

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• The poet is the priest of the invisible.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry, Invisible, Priests

  Opus Posthumous (1957) "Adagia"

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• and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

  e. e. cummings

  Moon, Sun, Romantic Poetry

  E. E. Cummings (2013). “Like a perhaps hand: Poems. Gedichte”, p.45, C.H.Beck

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

  Dennis Gabor

  Heart, Poetry, Poetic

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• 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)

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