Poetry Quotes

Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence its importance. (Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888)

Poetry has been to me an exceeding great reward; it has soothed my affection; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared my solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834)

Poetry is not turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. (Thomas S. Eliot, 1888-1965)

Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down. (Robert Frost, 1875-1963)

Do you suppose we owe nothing to Pope's deformity? – He said to himself, "If my person be crooked, my verses shall be straight." (William Hazlitt, 1778-1830)

I have reared a monument more enduring than bronze and loftier than the royal pyramids, one that no wasting rain, no unavailing north wind can destroy; no, not even the unending years nor the flight of time itself. I shall not wholly die. The greater part of me shall escape oblivion. (Horace, 65-8 b.c.)

The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. (William Somerset Maugham, 1874-1965)

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. (Percy B. Shelley, 1792-1822)

Verse without rhyme is a body without a soul. (Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745)

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