Verses Quotes - Page 20

• For even they who compose treatises of medicine or natural philosophy in verse are denominated Poets: yet Homer and Empedocles have nothing in common except their metre; the former, therefore, justly merits the name of the Poet; while the other should rather be called a Physiologist than a Poet.

  Aristotle

  Philosophy, Names, Medicine

  Aristotle (1815). “Aristotle's Treatise on Poetry”, p.66

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• The best verse hasn't been rhymed yet, The best house hasn't been planned, The highest peak hasn't been climbed yet, The mightiest rivers aren't spanned; Don't worry and fret, faint-hearted, The chances have just begun For the best jobs haven't been started, The best work hasn't been done.

  Berton Braley

  Jobs, Best Job, Rivers

  Berton Braley, “Opportunity”

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• Verse hath a middle nature: heaven keeps souls, The grave keeps bodies, verse the fame enrols.

  John Donne

  Heaven, Soul, Body

  1611 'An Anatomy of the World: The First Anniversary'.

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• To declaim freedom verses seems like a poem within a poem; freedom requires guns, it requires arms, but no feet.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Gun, Feet, Arms

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• Will there never come a season Which shall rid us from the curse? Of a prose which knows no reason And an unmelodious verse: When the world shall cease to wonder At the genius of an Ass, And a boy's eccentric blunder Shall not bring success to pass: When mankind shall be delivered From the clash of magazines, And the inkstand shall be shivered Into countless smithereens: When there stands a muzzled stripling, Mute, beside a muzzled bore: When the Rudyards cease from Kipling And the Haggards Ride no more.

  James Kenneth Stephen

  Boys, World, Eccentric

  James Kenneth Stephen, “To R. K.”

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• I don't understand the whole thrilling verse, but I love the way poetry turns ordinary words into winged things that rise up and soar!

  Margarita Engle

  Ordinary, Way, Soar

  Margarita Engle (2012). “The Wild Book”, p.78, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Make a mistake in the interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays, falsely scan a piece of Spenserian verse, and there is unlikely to be an entailment of eternal consequence; but we cannot lightly accept a similar laxity in the interpretation of Scripture. We are dealing with God’s thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly.

  D. A. Carson

  Pain, Mistake, Play

  D. A. Carson (1996). “Exegetical Fallacies”, p.9, Baker Books

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• Art and poetry cannot do without one another. Yet the two words are far from being synonymous. By Art I mean the creative or producing, work-making activity of the human mind. By Poetry I mean, not the particular art which consists in writing verses, but a process both more general and more primary: that intercommunication between the inner being of things and the inner being of the human Self which is a kind of divination (as was realized in ancient times; the Latin vates was both a poet and a diviner). Poetry, in this sense, is the secret life of each and all of the arts.

  Jacques Maritain

  Art, Latin, Writing

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• I heard Nirvana, and discovered that songs could be like poetry, but a little bit more refined: you didn't have to have 20 verses to get your point across.

  Justin Townes Earle

  Song, Littles, Heard

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• Verse is the natural speech of men, as singing is of birds'The Week's Survey, 18 June 1904

  Edward Thomas

  Men, June, Bird

  Edward Thomas (2011). “Selected Poems of Edward Thomas”, p.41, Faber & Faber

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• There is such a thing as literary fashion, and prose and verse have been regulated by the same caprice that cuts our coats and cocks our hats.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Fashion, Cutting, Literature

  "Curiosities of Literature". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, 1791.

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• I will not listen to your verse on an empty stomach!" declared the Vicomte. "You have no soul," said Philippe sadly. "But I have a stomach, and it cries aloud for sustenance." "I weep for you," said Philip. "Why do I waste my poetic gems upon you?

  Georgette Heyer

  Soul, Waste, Poetic

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• The impact of the Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt. Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic texts is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed.

  Andrew Rippin

  Reading, Impact, Order

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• Better than a thousand hollow words Is one word that brings peace. Better than a thousand hollow verses Is one verse that brings peace. Better than a hundred hollow lines Is one line of the dharma, bringing peace. It is better to conquer yourself Than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, Not by angels or by demons, Heaven or hell.

  Gautama Buddha

  Taken, Angel, Winning

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• Ghostface, catch the blast of a hype verse,
  My glock bursts, leave in a hearse, I did worse.
  I come rough, tough like an elephant tusk,
  Ya head rush, fly like Egyptian musk.

  Ghostface Killah

  Rap, Elephants, Hype

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• I had a fall out with Satan. Repeating satanic verses.

  Layzie Bone

  Fall, Satanic, Satan

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• I got a voodoo doll every time I pen a verse:
  Not only do they say they feel it, but they say it hurts.

  Pusha T

  Hurt, Rap, Hip Hop

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• My life is like a song and I think I know the words,
  And as I start to sing along the whole verse becomes a blur.
  So I freestyle improv, make mistakes and evolve,
  The obstacles repeat, cause naturally it revolves.

  MURS

  Song, Mistake, Rap

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• I recorded harp first or singing first. I recorded it all together. Part of the reason is that I don't know how to play the songs without also singing. I forget how they progress. I don't think that any of them are verse, chorus, verse, and so on. They are not simple.

  Joanna Newsom

  Song, Simple, Thinking

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• And what holds good of verse holds infinitely better in respect to prose.

  James Payn

  Prose

  James Payn (1882). “Sammlung”

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• Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most... are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so.

  James Fenton

  Regret, Believe, Reading

  "An Introduction to English Poetry". Book by James Fenton, 2002.

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• When I sit near the ocean in the morning and write my verses and breathe the salty wind which is coming from the water, I rejoice in God and I am blissful, as I was as a child.

  Joseph Goebbels

  Morning, Children, Ocean

  "Michael: a German fate in diary notes". Book by Joseph Goebbels, 1929.

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• What I desire of a poem is a clear understanding of motive, and a just evaluation of feeling A poem in the first place should offer us a new perception..bringing into being a new experience Verse is more valuable than prose for its rhythms are faster and more highly organised and lead to greater compexity.

  Yvor Winters

  New Experiences, Feelings, Understanding

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• I remember, when I was a child and wrote poems in little clasped books, I used to kiss the books and put them away tenderly because I had been happy near them, and take them out by turns when I was going from home, to cheer them by the change of air and the pleasure of the new place. This, not for the sake of the verses written in them, and not for the sake of writing more verses in them, but from pure gratitude.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Gratitude, Cheer, Children

  Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (2009). “The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1845-1846”, p.54, The Floating Press

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• I thinke it not amisse to forewarne you that you thrust as few wordes of many sillables into your verse as may be: and hereunto I might alledge many reasons: first the most auncient English wordes are of one sillable, so that the more monasyllables that you use, the truer Englishman you shall seeme, and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne.

  George Gascoigne

  Smell, Use, May

  George Gascoigne, John W. Cunliffe (2012). “The Complete Works of George Gascoigne: Volume 1, The Posies”, p.468, Cambridge University Press

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