Poetry-quotes Quotes

Des Menschen Kraft, im Dichter offenbartThe human power is revealed by poetIl potere dell'umanità si...

Now came still evening on, and twilight grayHad in her sober livery all things clad;Silence accompan...

Thou therefore on these Herbs, and Fruits, and Flow'rsFeed first, on each Beast next, and Fish, and ...

The vertical manThough we value noneBut the horizontal one.

Decide if a poem is a question or a declaration, a meditation or an outcry.

Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country

Though I love your company, your instructions are wasted her. I will always choose the woman who car...

Blessed are you who circled desire with a blade, and the garden with fiery swords, and heaven and ea...

Blessed is the covenant of love, the covenant of mercy, useless light behind the terror, deathless s...

nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look--my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath o...

It must have been an endless breathing in: between the wish to know and the wish to praise there was...

I learned from Whitman that the poem is a temple -- or a green field -- a place to enter, and in whi...

Take the blinders from your visiontake the padding from your earsand confess you've heard me crying ...

and everybody was happy that uncle lee was able to get that scholarship even though you wondered whe...

The trip to Mars can only be understood through Black Americans. I say, the trip to Mars can only be...

Do tears not yet spilledwait in small lakes?Or are they invisible riversthat run toward sadness?

It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was.

Alas! this is not what I thought life was.I knew that there were crimes and evil men,Misery and hate...

life is first boredom, then fear.whether or not we use it, it goes,and leaves what something hidden ...

The poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been in...

All things want to float.

Even when the lights go out, even when someone says to me: "It's over---," even when from the stage ...

Our age has built itself vast reservoirs of power / formless as the straining energy that it wrests ...

PoetTo mask the fiery thought,in simple words succeeds.For still the craft of genius is,To mask a ki...

Moonlight drifts from overA hundred thousand milesTo fall upon a cemeteryIt reads a hundred epitaphs...

The question ‘Why poetry?’ isn’t asking what makes poetry unique among art forms; poetry may indeed ...

I have wished a bird would fly away,And not sing by my house all day;Have clapped my hands at him fr...

In fact she herself once blamed meKyprogeneiabecause I prayed this word:I want.

Someone will remember us I sayEven in another time

Cover mine eyes, O my Love! Mine eyes that are weary of bliss As of light that is poignant and stron...

There is a wilderness we walk aloneHowever well-companioned

The poet Mallarmé listened to the painter Degas complaining about his inability to write poems even ...

The tongues of hell are dull.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,But I grow old and I forget your name. --From the poem "Mad ...

I have a Gumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots;Her coat is one of the tabby kind,with tiger s...

I had let it all grow. I had supposed It was all OK. Your lifeWas a liner I voyaged in.Costly educat...

Sometimes when I'm aloneI Cry, Cause I am on my own.The tears I cry are bitter and warm.They flow wi...

O to be self-balanced for contingencies, to confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents, reb...

Over the mountain growths, disease and sorrow, An uncaught bird is ever hovering, hovering,High in ...

...make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came." Wendell Berry

There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find

It is right it should be so;Man was made for joy and woe;And when this we rightly know,Thro' the wor...

The emmet's inch and eagle's mileMake lame philosophy to smile.He who doubts from what he seesWill n...

A robin redbreast in a cagePuts all heaven in a rage.A dove-house fill'd with doves and pigeonsShudd...

He who mocks the infant's faithShall be mock'd in age and death.He who shall teach the child to doub...

Man disavows, and Deity disowns me;Hell might afford my miseries a shelter;Therefore Hell keeps her ...

Sorrows of Werther William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63) WERTHER had a love for Charlotte Such as w...

Go to the poets, they will speak to theeMore perfectly of purer creatures--

I am telling himwhat he wants to hear: antsdying of love underthe constellation of the dandelion.I s...

Terence, this is stupid stuff:You eat your victuals fast enough;There can't be much amiss, 'tis clea...

Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out. Perfect und...

Poetry, like jazz, is one of those dazzling diamonds of creative industry that help human beings mak...

The music of revelation announces itself to the reader in somber brooding tones or in melodies light...

Stars ink your fingerswith a lexicon of flameblazing rare knowledge.

To do something very common, in my own way.

When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.

I came to explore the wreck. / The words are purposes. / The words are maps. / I came to see the dam...

A language is a map of our failures

All's taken away: my love and my power.The body, thrown into city it hates,Finds no joy in the sunli...

A town loved with bitter love.

And did with sighs their fate deplore,Since I must shelter them no more;And if before my joys were s...

I feel my griefs too, and there scarce is groundUpon my flesh t'inflict another wound.Yet dare I not...

I love you just the way you arebut you don't see you like I do.You shouldn't try so hard to be perfe...

I speak of new cities and new peopleI tell you the past is a bucket of ashes.I tell you yesterday is...

What will you do now with the gift of your left life?

Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?

beware women grownoldwho were neveranything butyoung

Poetry is an attempt to penetrate the dense reality to find a place where the simplest things look a...

If there is no God,Not everything is permitted to man.He is still his brother's keeperAnd he is not ...

i carry your heart with me(i carry it inmy heart)i am never without it(anywherei go you go,my dear;a...

it's springand the goat-footedballoonMan whistlesfarandwee

All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.

The heart doth recognise thee,Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,Doth view thee fair, dot...

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!O falling fire and piercing cryand panic, and a weak mailed fistclench...

Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul...

It was not Death, for I stood up,And all the Dead, lie down—It was not Night, for all the BellsPut o...

We both believe, and disbelieve a hundred times an hour, which keeps believing nimble.

The Poets light but Lamps-Themselves-go out-

Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead.

...O if we but knew what to do When we delve or hew— Hack and rack the growing green! Since country ...

...Where we, even where we mean To mend her we end her, When we hew or delve:After-comers cannot gue...

The mere ambition to write a poem is enough to kill it.

I strike the ground with the soles of my feet and life rises up my legs, spreads up my skeleton, tak...

She dances in a ring of fire and throws of the challenge with a shrug.

She dances in a ring of fire and throws off the challenge with a shrug.