Poetry Quotes

Always be a poet, even in prose.
Charles Baudelaire

No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.
Horace

Live, Long, Water

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery

Finished, Abandoned, Poem

Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
Carl Sandburg

Synthesis, Biscuits

Any healthy man can go without food for two days - but not without poetry.
Charles Baudelaire

Food, Two, Days

Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
Don Marquis

Waiting, Down, Rose

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.
Gustave Flaubert

True, Everything, May

'Therefore' is a word the poet must not know.
Andre Gide

Word, Poet, Therefore

Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
John Keats

Thoughts, Almost, Highest

Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Beautiful, Makes, Mirror

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.
Joseph Joubert

Find, Bring, Unless

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.
Jean Cocteau

Poet, Invent, Listens

A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses.
Jean Cocteau

True, Nor, Roses

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
Novalis

Reason, Wounds, Heals

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.
George Sand

Life, True, Though

There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
Robert Graves

God is the perfect poet.
Robert Browning

God, Perfect, Poet

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
Thomas Hardy

Alone, Him, Said

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

Life, Children, Trying

There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing.
John Cage

Nothing, Realize, Soon

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.
David Carradine

Cannot, Poet, Poem

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Else, Poet, Footnote

Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
Paul Engle

Power, Words, Together

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.
Wallace Stevens

Woman, Looks, Poet

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau

Truth, Liar, Poet

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