Poetry Quotes - Page 28

• Doeg, though without knowing how or why,
  Made still a blundering kind of melody;
  Spurr'd boldly on, and dash'd through thick and thin,
  Through sense and nonsense, never out nor in;
  Free from all meaning whether good or bad,
  And in one word, heroically mad.

  John Dryden

  Knowing, Mad, Kind

  John Dryden (1873). “Poetical Works: Containing Original Poems, Tales, and Translations”, p.69

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• It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

  T. S. Eliot

  Tests, Genuine, Communicate

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “Selected Essays”, p.209, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

  Michael Faraday

  Thinking, Mind, Facts

  Bence Jones, Michael Faraday (2010). “The Life and Letters of Faraday”, p.398, Cambridge University Press

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• I could define poetry this way: it is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation.

  Robert Frost

  Way, Lost, Prose

  Robert Frost (1961). “Conversations on the Craft of Poetry”

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• The world's history is a divine poem, of which the history of every nation is a canto, and every man a word. Its strains have been pealing along down the centuries, and though there have been mingled the discords of warring cannon and dying men, yet to the Christian philosopher and historian - the humble listener - there has been a Divine melody running through the song which speaks of hope and halcyon days to come.

  James A. Garfield

  Christian, Running, Song

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, 1895.

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• Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves.

  Robert Graves

  Humorous, Fancy, Way

  Robert Graves, Patrick J. Quinn (2000). “Some speculations on literature, history, and religion”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

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• Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identify and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views.

  Robert Graves

  Strong, Philosophy, Party

  Robert Graves, Patrick J. Quinn (2000). “Some speculations on literature, history, and religion”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

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• Abstract reason, formerly the servant of practical human reasons, has everywhere become its master, and denies poetry any excuse for existence.
  Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. Of safeguarding our poetic institutions against the encroachments of mechanized, insensate, inhumane, abstract rationality.

  Robert Graves

  Humorous, Fancy, Way

  "The Crane Bag". Book by Robert Graves. "The Case for Xanthippe", 1969.

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• Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.

  Johann Georg Hamann

  Mother, Race, Tongue

  Johann Georg Hamann (2007). “Writings on Philosophy and Language”

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• A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters.

  T. E. Hulme

  Analogies, Habit, Reader

  "Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art". Book by T. E. Hulme, 1924.

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• The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

  Samuel Johnson

  Essence, Delight, Unexpected

  Samuel Johnson (1819). “The lives of the most eminent English poets, with critical observations on their works”, p.201

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• Still may syllables jar with time,
  Still may reason war with rhyme,
  Resting never!

  Ben Jonson

  War, May, Jars

  Ben Jonson, “A Fit Of Rhyme Against Rhyme”

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• Novels are about other people and poems are about yourself.

  Philip Larkin

  People, About Yourself, Novel

  "Required Writing". Book by Philip Larkin, 1983.

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• As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Civilization, Decline

  "On Milton" by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1825.

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• As for me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because this self-lust has a delightful dying fall in my soul.

  Stephane Mallarme

  Fall, Love Is, Self

  Letter to Henri Cazalis, May 14, 1867.

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• Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter...the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing.

  John Milton

  Age, Ornaments, Lame

  "Paradise Lost". The Verse, 1668.

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• Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

  Cesare Pavese

  Writing, Making Love, Remember

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.51, Transaction Publishers

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• Good poetry seems so simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Simple, Men, Healthy

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2097, Delphi Classics

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• Made poetry a mere mechanic art.

  William Cowper

  Art, Mechanic, Made

  'Table Talk' (1782) l. 654 (on Pope)

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• Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme?
  Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread,
  By winding myrtle round your ruin'd shed?

  George Crabbe

  Myrtle, Ruins, Bread

  George Crabbe, “The VILLage: Book I”

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• Why then we should drop into poetry.

  Charles Dickens

  Should

  Charles Dickens, George Cruikshank (1868). “The Works of Charles Dickens: Our mutual friend”, p.44

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• The true poem is the poet's mind.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Mind, Artist

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.244, Library of America

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• It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Philosophy, Long

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.209, Harvard University Press

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• The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth-truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Mean, Understanding, Association

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• We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Age, Genius, Wonderful

  "On Milton" by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1825.

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