Poetry Quotes - Page 25

• Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  Matthew Arnold

  Life, Beautiful, Dream

  "Dover Beach" l. 35 (1867)

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• Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

  T. S. Eliot

  Inspirational, Time, Choices

  T.S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.6, Faber & Faber

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• It was at that age that poetry came in search of me.

  Pablo Neruda

  Age

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• Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.

  Jasper Fforde

  Light, Mind, Cracks

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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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• Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.

  Theodor Adorno

  Writing, Auschwitz, Barbaric

  Theodor W. Adorno, Rolf Tiedemann (2003). “Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader”, p.15, Stanford University Press

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• She walks in beauty, like the night Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that's best of dark and bright Meet in her aspect and her eyes.

  Lord Byron

  Love, Eye, Dark

  "SheWalks in Beauty" l. 1 (1815)

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• It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.

  William Carlos Williams

  Men, News, Found

  "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" bk. 1, l. 317 (1955)

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• I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

  Pablo Neruda

  Love, Pregnancy, I Hate You

  Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII”

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• There are two ways of disliking poetry, one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.

  Oscar Wilde

  Two, Way, Pope

  "Oscar Wilde's Wit and Wisdom: A Book of Quotations".

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• Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

  Maya Angelou

  Inspiring, Writing, Backbone

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• i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

  e. e. cummings

  Love, Relationship, Valentines Day

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

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• I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.

  Margaret Atwood

  Love, Sleep, Air

  "Variation on theWord Sleep" l. 27 (1981)

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• Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed.

  Joseph Campbell

  Inspirational, Biographies, Myth

  Joseph Campbell (2008). “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, p.213, New World Library

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• Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.

  Anne Sexton

  Love, Fall, Heart

  Anne Sexton, “Admonitions To A Special Person”

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• this is thy hour o soul, thy free flight into the wordless, away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, night, sleep, death and the stars.

  Walt Whitman

  Art, Stars, Book

  Walt Whitman, Harold Bloom (2003). “Selected Poems”, p.204, Library of America

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• Sir, I admit your general rule, That every poet is a fool, But you yourself may serve to show it, That every fool is not a poet.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  May, Fool, Shows

  Samuel Coleridge, “Epigram”

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• And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, and silently steal away.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Music, Night, Taking A Break

  "The Day Is Done" st. 11 (1844)

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• Every word was once a poem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Emerson: Poems”, p.251, Everyman's Library

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• The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatness, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Ambition, Character

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2800, Delphi Classics

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• Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

  Jack Kerouac

  Wisdom, Phones, People

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• In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, Snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.

  Christina Rossetti

  Nature, Travel, Winter

  'Mid-Winter'

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• Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by the hand, Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay. Remember me when no more day by day You tell me of our future that you planned: Only remember me; you understand It will be late to counsel then or pray. Yet if you should forget me for a while And afterward remember, do not grieve: For if the darkness and corruption leave A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, Better by far you should forget and smile Than that you should remember and be sad.

  Christina Rossetti

  Grieving, Hands, Land

  "Remember" l. 13 (1862)

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• Now the ears of my ears awake and now the eyes of my eyes are opened.

  e. e. cummings

  Nature, Eye, Ears

  "Selected Poems".

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• For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

  T. S. Eliot

  Work, Trying, Philanthropy

  Four Quartets "East Coker" pt. 5 (1940)

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