Quotes About Poetry

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many.

Poets are interested mostly in death and commas.

Death is a name for beauty not in use.

The poets scrolls will outlive the monuments of stone. Genius survives; all else is claimed by death.

Ere the dolphin dies Its hues are brightest. Like an infant's breath Are tropic winds before the voice of death.

Lev-en-thal to Le-vov! Lev-en-thal to Le-vov!" was an anapest

In the infancy of society every author is necessarily a poet, because language itself is poetry. – Owen Barfield

Tolkien, lucky man, had protected a realm of his own invention to which he could flee. Robert Graves, embittered by battle, writes: The child alone a poet is: Spring and Fairyland are his… Wisdom made him old and wary banishing his Lords of Faery

A troubadour to a distant mistress.

La poésie c'est la vie même du grand EROS morte et par là survivante.

Poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring frenzy, awakens lyric....But he, who, not being inspired and having no touch of madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of art--he, I say, and his poetry are not admitted; the sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the madman.

He who approaches the temple of the Muses without inspiration, in the belief that craftsmanship alone suffices, will remain a bungler and his presumptuous poetry will be obscured by the songs of the maniacs.

At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.

If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds.

And I think that you must have observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose.

Something of this kind, I replied:–God is always to be represented as he truly is, whatever be the sort of poetry, epic, lyric or tragic, in which the representation is given. Right. And is he not truly good? and must he not be represented as such? Certainly.

Some say there are nine Muses. Count again. Behold the tenth: Sappho of Lesbos.

I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

Then I knew that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them.

The first care of the rulers is to be education, of which an outline is drawn after the old Hellenic model, providing only for an improved religion and morality, and more simplicity in music and gymnastic, a manlier strain of poetry, and greater harmony of the individual and the State.

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet

So we would be right to say the seers and prophets just mentioned are 'divine' and 'inspired' – likewise, everyone with a knack for poetry. Likewise, politicians and public figures are nothing less than divine and possessed when – under some god's inspiration and influence – they give speeches that lead to success in important matters, even they have no idea what they are talking about. – Quite so.