Poetry Quotes - Page 11

• The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

  Christopher Morley

  Courage, Art, Doors

  Christopher Morley (1925). “Forty-four Essays by Christopher Morley”

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• Before men ever wrote in clay they cast their words in verse and line, rythymbound in poets' minds, defying time and age.

  Dave Beard

  Men, Mind, Age

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

  Robert Frost

  Fire, Ice, World

  "Fire and Ice" l. 1 (1923)

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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, Claims

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• Summer's lease hath all too short a date.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Too Short, Love Poems

  Sonnet 18

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• I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills When all at once I saw a crowd A host of golden daffodils Beside the lake beneath the trees Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

  William Wordsworth

  Lonely, Nature, Spring

  "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud" l. 1 (1815 ed.) See DorothyWordsworth 1

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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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• If music be the food of love, play on.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Inspirational, Romantic

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 1, sc. 1, l. 1

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• In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it is the exact opposite.

  Paul Dirac

  Science, Opposites, People

  "Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists". Book by by Robert Jungk, as translated by James Cleugh, p. 22, 1958.

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• Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Spring, Wind

  Sonnet 18

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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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• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
  Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
  Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
  And summer's lease hath all too short a date . . .

  William Shakespeare

  Summer, Art, Wind

  Sonnet 18

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• Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

  Plato

  Life, Wise, Wisdom

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• A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.

  Samuel McChord Crothers

  Writing, Tired, Lines

  Samuel McChord Crothers (1920). “The Dame School of Experience, and Other Papers”

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• Law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

  Tom Schulman

  Carpe Diem, Dead Poets Society, Engineering

  "Dead Poets Society". www.imdb.com. 1989.

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• The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in.

  Dylan Thomas

  Gaps, Thunder, Holes

  Dylan Thomas, Daniel Jones (2003). “The Poems of Dylan Thomas”, p.22, New Directions Publishing

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• And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, The hand that held the steel: For only blood can wipe out blood, And only tears can heal

  Oscar Wilde

  Healing, Blood, Hands

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde”, p.24, Oscar Wilde

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• The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.

  Frederick William Robertson

  Thinking, Office, Feels

  Frederick William Robertson (1871). “Life, Letters, Lectures, and Addresses”, p.786

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• Poetry, I thought then, and still do, is a matter of space on the page interrupted by a few well-chosen words, to give them importance. Prose is a less grand affair which has to stretch to the edges of the page to be convincing.

  Fay Weldon

  Space, Giving, Literature

  Fay Weldon (2007). “Auto da Fay: A Memoir”, p.231, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• For me, the poetry in a work is that which makes visible the invisible.

  Nathalie Sarraute

  Invisible, Visible

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• What the artist tries to do (either consciously or unconsciously) is to not only capture the essence of something but also to amplify it in order to more powerfully activate the same neural mechanisms that would be activated by the original object.

  Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

  Art, Order, Essence

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• No longer do we accept the 'sublimation model' according to which 'the function of art is to sublimate or transform experience, raising it from ordinary to extraordinary, from commonplace to unique, from low to high'.

  Rosalind E. Krauss

  Art, Unique, Ordinary

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• It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.

  John Taylor Gatto

  Life, Education, Teacher

  "Why Schools Don't Educate". John Taylor Gatto's New York City Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech, www.naturalchild.org. January 31, 1990.

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• I think of my peace paintings as one long poem, with each painting being a single stanza.

  Robert Indiana

  Thinking, Long, Famous Artist

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• I want to get rid of the Indian problem. [...] Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian Question and no Indian Department.

  Duncan Campbell Scott

  Native American, Body, Want

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