Louis Untermeyer Quotes

#1. Poetry is the power of defining the indefinable in terms of the unforgettable.

Louis Untermeyer

#2. What hymns are sung.
What praises said.
For homemade miracles of bread?

Louis Untermeyer

#3. She has something to say about what life is like-which is all we ask of poetry.

Louis Untermeyer

#4. From compromise and things half done, Keep me with stern and stubborn pride; And when at last the fight is won, God, keep me still unsatisfied.

Louis Untermeyer

#5. Life, alas, is very drear. Up with the glass! Down with the beer!

Louis Untermeyer

#6. Every poet knows the pun is Pierian, that it springs from the same soil as the Muse?a matching and shifting of vowels and consonants, an adroit assonance sometimes derided as jackassonance.

Louis Untermeyer

#7. And fathers are a blessing, too, they give the place a tone;
In fact each child should try and have some parents of its own.

Louis Untermeyer

#8. It takes a heap o' children to make a home that's true,And home can be a palace grand, or just a plain, old shoe;But if it has a mother dear, and a good old dad or two,Why, that's the sort of good old home for good old me and you.

Louis Untermeyer

#9. Nothing but blackness above And nothing that moves but the cars ... God, if you wish for our love, Fling us a handful of stars!

Louis Untermeyer

#10. Laughter shall drown the raucous shout;And, though these shelt'ring walls are thin,May they be strong to keep hate outAnd hold love in.

Louis Untermeyer

#11. Come, drink the mystic wine of Night, Brimming with silence and the stars; While earth, bathed in this holy light, Is seen without its scars.

Louis Untermeyer

#12. Write out of love, write out of instinct, write out of reason. But always for money.

Louis Untermeyer

#13. Why has our poetry eschewed The rapture and response of food? What hymns are sung and praises said For the home made miracle of bread?

Louis Untermeyer

#14. God, though this life is but a wraith, Although we know not what we use, Although we grope with little faith, Give me the heart to fight and lose.

Louis Untermeyer

#15. Friendship is like love at its best; not blind but sympathetically all-seeing; a support which does not wait for understanding; an act of faith which does not need, but always has, reason.

Louis Untermeyer