Quotes about Poetry
In the Book of Poetry there are three hundred poems, but the meaning of all of them may be put in a single sentence: Have no debasing thoughts.
- Confucius
A theologian who does not love art, poetry, music and nature can be dangerous. Blindness and deafness toward the beautiful are not incidental; they necessarily are reflected in his theology.
- Pope Benedict XVI
Writing poetry is a state of free float.
- Margaret Atwood
When Poetry thus keeps its place as the handmaiden of piety, it shall attain not a poor perishable wreath, but a crown that fadeth not away.
- John Wesley
Poetry demands a man with a special gift for it, or else one with a touch of madness in him.
- Aristotle
At certain periods of history it is only poetry that is capable of dealing with reality by condensing it into something graspable, something that otherwise wouldn't be retained by the mind.
- Joseph Brodsky
Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge - it is as immortal as the heart of man.
- William Wordsworth
Wordsworth went to the Lakes, but he was never a lake poet. He found in stones the sermons he had already hidden there.
- Oscar Wilde
Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Poetry is the gate through which I enter the land of enchantment. Once inside the flaming wall, my limitations fall from me, and my spirit is free.
- Helen Keller
Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction?
- Virginia Woolf
Nearly everybody is looking for something brave to do. I don't know why people shouldn't write poetry. That's brave.
- Robert Frost