Of trees I (Krishna) am the fig.
- Bhagavad Gita
'Twas he that ranged the words at random flung, Pierced the fair pearls and them together strung.
- Bidpai
morning: that first sapphire dome of glow.
- C K Williams
Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess what is seen during a moment.
- Carl Sandburg
The courage of the Poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.
- Christopher Morley
Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.
- Dennis Gabor
Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.
- Carl Sandburg
A good poem is a contribution to reality. The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it. A good poem helps to change the shape of the universe, helps to extend everyone's knowledge of himself and the world around him.
- Dylan Thomas
A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.
- E B White
With me poetry has not been a purpose, but a passion.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes.
- Carl Sandburg
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
- Edgar Allan Poe
Poetry is the utterance of deep and heart-felt truth-the true poet is very near the oracle.
- Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Feel you the barren flattery of a rhyme? Can poets soothe you, when you pine for bread, By winding myrtle round your ruin'd shed?
- George Crabbe
No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers.
- Horace
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
- Jean Cocteau
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
- Jean Cocteau
When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Oh love will make a dog howl in rhyme.
- John Fletcher
Poetry is what gets lost in translation.
- John Fletcher
Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
- John Keats
You will not find poetry anywhere unless you bring some of it with you.
- Joseph Joubert
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder with a dash of the dictionary
- Kahlil Gibran
The poet... may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather.
- Lionel Trilling
Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.
- Marianne Moore
I've written some poetry I don't understand myself.
- Carl Sandburg
Poetry is all nouns and verbs.
- Marianne Moore
The job of the poet is to render the world-to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do.
- Mark Van Doren
For me, poetry is an impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind.
- Maxwell Bodenheim
Poetry is not a profession, it is a destiny.
- Mikhail Dudan
Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.
- Novalis
Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.
- Carl Sandburg
Poets aren't very usefulBecause they aren't consumeful or produceful..
- Ogden Nash
When you write in prose you say what you mean. When you write in rhyme you say what you must.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
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
Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.
- Paul Engle
A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
- Paul Valery
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.
- Plato
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
- Randall Jarell
A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof.
- Rene Char
The poem is the point at which our strength gave out.
- Richard Rosen
Poetry should be common in experience but uncommon in books.
- Robert Frost
Poetry is truth dwelling in beauty.
- Robert Gilfillan
There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either.
- Robert Graves
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
- Robert Frost
The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem.".
- Robert Penn Warren
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
- Robert Frost
A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep.
- Salman Rushdie
A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose.
- Samuel Mcchord Crothers
It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.
- Stephen Mallarme
For me, poetry is an evasion of the real job of writing prose.
- Sylvia Plath
If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.
- Thomas Hardy
In poetry, you must love the words, the ideas and the images and rhythms with all your capacity to love anything at all.
- Wallace Stevens
