875 Poetry Quotes to share with friends and relatives

I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. – Pablo Neruda, quoted in Wall Street Journal,, 14 November 1985

Poetry mends a broken arrow then shoots us in the heart with it. – Terri Guillemets, “Love, life, poetry,” 2016

Poetry… simple, sensuous and passionate. – John Milton, “Of Education. To Mr. Samuel Hartlib,” c.1650

The flowery Path of Poetry but ill accords with the thorny Mazes of the Law; in the one I have wandered with rapture from Infancy, and I have endeavoured to grace the other with a simple but lasting Ornament—Integrity of Heart. – Charles Snart, “Dedication, to Robert Lowe, Esq. Oxton,” 1807 January 1st, Newar

Poetry is the impish attempt to paint the color of the wind. – Maxwell Bodenheim

The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on. – Emily Dickinson

Poetry is the overflowing of the soul. – Henry T. Tuckerman, “Bryant,” Thoughts on the Poets, 1850

Poetry is the energy of the soul made ink. – Terri Guillemets, “Lust & creativity,” 1995

[Man] asks from prose, only under a more obscure and indefinite form, what he expects from poetry; and indeed, where is the actual boundary between poetry and prose? and how can one help owning that prose is but poetry gradually but never entirely extinguished or calmed down? – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)

A poet is a nightingale, who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds. – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetry is not always words. – Terri Guillemets, “Moonglow over the mountain,” 1991

The desert attracts the nomad, the ocean the sailor, the infinite the poet. – Author Unknown

What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed? – W.H. Auden

Poets are candid. They tell us not under an abstract, but an individual form, in which reality breathes, what humanity thinks in the most secret recesses of its mind. – Alexandre Vinet (1797–1847)

The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. – Dylan Thomas

Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. – Jean Cocteau

Sorry if these lines are irregular in length and jolty in meter. – J.F. Bowman, 1868 [a little altered —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]

If Rilke cut himself shaving, he would bleed poetry. – Stephen Spender, about Rainer Maria Rilke

Mathematics and Poetry are… the utterance of the same power of imagination, only that in the one case it is addressed to the head, in the other, to the heart. – Thomas Hill

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. – W. Somerset Maugham