From what the moderns want, we must learn what poetry should become from what the ancients did, what poetry must be. – Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
He who has religion will speak poetry. But philosophy is the tool with which to seek and discover religion. – Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Nothing truly convincing – which would possess thoroughness, vigor, and skill – has been written against the ancients as yet especially not against their poetry. – Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one. – W. H. Auden
Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild. – Denis Diderot
I never really liked poetry readings I liked to read poetry by myself, but I liked singing, chanting my lyrics to this jazz group. – Leonard Cohen
I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry. – John Cage
If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy. – Muhammad Iqbal
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry that is, prose = words in their best order – poetry = the best words in the best order. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded. – Herbert Spencer
I want to branch out. I want to write. I write poetry. I want to see my children grow up well. – Annie Lennox
Poetry involves the mysteries of the irrational perceived through rational words. – Vladimir Nabokov
Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice. – James Buchan
The poetry of a people comes from the deep recesses of the unconscious, the irrational and the collective body of our ancestral memories. – Margaret Walker
I was a 16-year-old girl at one point, so of course I wrote poetry. – Elizabeth Edwards
In poetry everything which must be said is almost impossible to say well. – Paul Valery
Poetry remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. – Jorge Luis Borges
I did not have a very literary background. I came to poetry from the sciences and mathematics, and also through an interest in Japanese and Chinese poetry in translation. – Robert Morgan
Art: If the object of poetry is, to make men, then poetry is the heir of prophecy. – Muhammad Iqbal
