Quotes about Poetry

It's true of Jamie. But I want it to be true of you too. And for that matter, me. I don't believe we are accidents in the world, and I don't believe we were supposed to be actors either. I think we were supposed to be ourselves and we were meant as a miracle. Jamie, Be encouraged. Your heart is writing a poem on the world and it's being turned into a thousand songs.

The globally acclaimed author of Fully Human, Fully Alive: A New Life through a New Vision, John Powell, estimates that an average person taps only 10 percent of his potential, sees only 10 percent of the beauty that is all around him, hears only 10 percent of its music and poetry, smells only 10 percent of its fragrance, and tastes only 10 percent of the deliciousness of being alive.

Poetry proceeds from the totality of man, sense, imagination, intellect, love, desire, instinct, blood and spirit together.

If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live.

Softly the breezes from the forest came, Softly they blew aside the taper's flame; Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower; Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower; Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone; Lovely the moon in ether, all alone: Sweet too, the converse of these happy mortals, As that of busy spirits when the portals Are closing in the west; or that soft humming We hear around when Hesperus is coming. Sweet be their sleep.

The two divinest things the world has got— A lovely woman and a rural spot.

Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar star of Poetry, as Fancy is the sails - and Imagination the rudder.

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us—and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

There is no one who does not exaggerate. In conversation, men are encumbered with personality, and talk too much. In modern sculpture, picture, and poetry, the beauty is miscellaneous; the artist works here and there, and at all points, adding and adding, instead of unfolding the unit of his thought.

If we examine the poems of Thérèse of Lisieux at all, they reveal themselves richer than we first thought. And this is the problem with her poetry: We have to go beyond the simple style, which is naturally and deliberately artless—as is fitting for a "Carmelite poem"—to discover the treasures it conceals.

For Thérèse, poetry was not "art for amusement," because she did not write for her own satisfaction but out of duty, or at least with a concern to serve, to help, and to encourage.6