Greatest Poetry Quotes

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  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Love, Valentines Day, Cute Boyfriend

  1850 Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 43.

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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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• 

  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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• The woods are lovely, dark, and deep but I have promises to keep...

  Robert Frost

  Tattoo, Running, Taken

  "Stopping byWoods on a Snowy Evening" l. 13 (1923)

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• 

  But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Inspirational, Tattoo

  "Stopping byWoods on a Snowy Evening" l. 13 (1923)

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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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• And this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart I carry your heart [ i carry it in my heart ]

  e. e. cummings

  Stars, Heart, Wonder

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

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• here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

  e. e. cummings

  I Love You, Spiritual, Stars

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

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• 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

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• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Love, Boyfriend, Valentine

  1850 Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 43.

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• All that is gold does not glitter.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Being Strong, Travel, Fantasy Novels

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.179, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• One man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
  And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Men, Bending Down

  'When You Are Old'

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• ...How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face... "When You Are Old And Gray

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, Men, Bending Down

  The Countess Kathleen (1892) "When You Are Old"

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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)

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

  Robert Frost

  Poetry, Emotion, Found

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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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• Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

  John Keats

  Inspirational, Reading Poetry, Remembrance

  Letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 238

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• Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

  Robert Frost

  Hate, Thinking, Fire

  "Fire and Ice" l. 5 (1923)

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• Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Beauty, Taken, Simple

  Interview with Stephen Colbert at Montclair Kimberley Academy, January 29, 2010.

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• Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.

  Cyril Connolly

  Believe, People, Given

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• The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.

  Walt Whitman

  Passion, Arbitrary, Rhyming

  Walt Whitman (2012). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.323, Courier Corporation

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• But most love poetry is awful; nobody knows how to write good love poetry either. But that's not a reason not to write love poetry. Some of the best poetry ever written has been love poetry, and some of the greatest poetry ever written has been political poetry.

  W. S. Merwin

  Good Love, Writing, Political

  "An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureate". Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

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