Poetry
W. H. Auden on Poetry
“A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.”
William Shakespeare on Imagination
“The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.”
Paul Valery on Poetry
“A poem is never finished, only abandoned.“
Adrian Mitchell on Poetry
“Most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people.”
Arnold Lobel on Books
“Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.”
Robert Frost on Poetry
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
Paul Dirac on Science and Poetry
“In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.”
Plato on Poetry
“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.”
Horace on Poetry
“No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.”
Rene Char on Poetry
“A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.”