Top 100 Poetry Humor Quotes
#1. Are you just a car salesman or are you a poet too?" "I've never been accused of poetry before.
Robert Charles Wilson
#2. By(e) pen, I've tried my hand at poetry; only to see how boring it is to me. That is, unless I get a chance to destroy each and every piece while doing it as I please.
Criss Jami
#3. What I think we need to do is infuse everyday and every action with the kind of values we hope will be in the future, with kindness, with nurturing, with dreams, ambition, using your talents, not resorting to violence, other forms of conflict resolution, with humor, with poetry, with music.
Gloria Steinem
#4. There was an old man of St. Bees,
Who was stung in the arm by a wasp;
When they asked, "Does it hurt?"
He replied, "No, it doesn't,
But I thought all the while 'twas a Hornet.
W.S. Gilbert
#5. A word a day keep's the 'head' doctor away!
Carol Robi
#6. Tiny Giggles
Silly giggles of laughter
I store upon a shelf
I give some to other
I save some for myself
I am rich beyond all measure
Though not with worldly wealth
I store up these treasures
For my heart and soulful health.
Muse
#7. The statement 'There is nothing more American than an Indian' happens to be a multidimensional paradox. Try and not say too many of those. That might open your mind to ideas that could cause sanity point loss.
Charles Slagle
#8. I put a chameleon on a red dildo... He blushed
Bo Burnham
#9. Frances Bellamy thought the changes spoiled the poetry of it. He was a pretty stern guy. Everybody has some sense of humor, but I don't think he had much.
John Bellamy Foster
#10. Sir U fell down from a speeding train,
Which did some damage to his brain,
And after that he did not know
How to pronounce the letter O.
Edward Gorey
#11. THE PRESOCRATIC PROBLEM
[all snap flags]
Parmenides named his gun The Hot Power of the Stars. His gun was one, uncreated, imperishable, timeless, changeless, perfect, spherical. Spherical was the problem.
Anne Carson
#12. It costs me never a stab nor squirm / To tread by chance upon a worm. / Aha, my little dear, / I say, Your clan will pay me back one day.
Dorothy Parker
#13. I think I love humor in poetry, but not that slapstick cheap easy humor, but that uncomfortable, "did she say that out loud?" kind of humor.
Victoria Chang
#14. I'll let no man in, unless of course, he knocks.
Walk right in to my heart with a thousand locks.
Casey Renee Kiser
#15. Considering the number of ghastly love poems that had been written and which seemed fairly clearly a waste of everyone's time, Jonathan couldn't help but be surprised that coffee hadn't been thus immortalized.
James P. Blaylock
#16. Stars in the night,' he said. 'Something something something something, some delight
Philippa Gregory
#17. Enjoy yourselves. And Hap: Don't let Umber near the arrows and bows; he's liable to shoot himself in the nose." Dodd grinned and snapped the reins, and the carriage rolled away.
Umber sniffed. "One of his lesser poems. Come, Hap.
P.W. Catanese
#18. Secretly, deep down, everybody on Earth believes they can write poetry, apart from the members of the Poets' Guild, who know they can't.
K.J. Parker
#19. In English, we were still on the Introduction to Poetry Unit, and I'm not lying, if I ever meet Percy Bysshe Shelley walking down the streets of Marysville, I'm going to punch him right in the face.
Gary D. Schmidt
#20. I keep dying and hoping you notice me. But you're too busy living.
F.K. Preston
#21. 'We're not ... we haven't been writing poetry and sprinkling rose petals and tripping hand in hand under rainbows, Kay.'
'Just because you have Y chromosomes doesn't mean you can't tell each other how you feel, Dylan. Your penises won't fall off if you do.'
Kim Fielding
#22. Really, for all the poetry in the world on the subject, when you get right down to it, it's mostly just boom! penis vagina.
Martin Leicht
#23. Paranormal. It rolls off the tongue with such poetry but it means something like, beyond normal. There is nothing paranormal about magic. Magic is the norm.
- Penny Sweeney
Magic All Around
Marcy L. Peska
#24. Can't even sleep through the night without you and those sun-dried ginger ale complected limbs crocheted into my thighs ...
Brandi L. Bates
#25. No. No, it was a lonely writer I met one stormy day in Laguna Beach. He had a poem about Thelonious Monk that he sealed in a tin can and labeled Campbell's Cream of Piano Soup. Later I hear he killed himself to avoid the draft.
Tom Robbins
#26. The wall between writing and painting is just good grammar.
Moderation in moderation.
Fun is scary with a happy ending.
Just love. If love doesn't transform that which annoys you, it will be easier to tolerate.
Emily Thornton Calvo
#28. It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.
Kay Ryan
#29. Just know I am
Not there to catch you
But I am there for you
Caleb Warta
#30. English kings married their cousins and so their kids were as sharp as clubs.
Peter Prasad
#31. If my life was pulled into the pages of a book, there would be coffee stains and wrinkles along the lines of that narrative. Because all I can wish is that the book of my life would be well read and well loved. Living within words and the sound of writing.
F.K. Preston
#32. It is humor's job to laugh at the futility oft engendered by the improbable; but it is poetry's job to dream of the potentiality of that which is not impossible.
D.E. Navarro
#33. How do you know
you're a girl?
I'm wearing a frock.
And if you take
it off?
I get cold, so I put
it back on.
If I was a boy,
I don't know what
I'd do.
Ivor Cutler
#34. The next morning I had Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gave a lecture wherein she managed to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever once quoting a single word of Sylvia Plath.
John Green
#35. A sense of humor is a sense of proportion. It is also a sense of delight
delight in noting life has its incongruities and absurdities and that we can live in spite of them.
John Frederick Nims (WESTERN WIND: AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY)
Margaret Jean Langstaff
#36. And when they dusted my mind for your fingerprints they found yours.
Shannon L. Alder
#37. I wish I could run into the world's arms. Linger within the spaces between nothing. I wish I could filter out of existence. To live quietly without dying. I wish I could be cherished by life itself. To speak and sing volumes without lying to myself.
F.K. Preston
#38. During our first date,
I wanted to hold your hand so bad
I almost cut mine off
and threw it at you
to see if you would catch it
Colin Gilbert
#39. I wonder if a fish's
One and only wish is
That other fish will never say,
This fish is sure delicious!
Brian Rock
#40. Drama, it would be as if you wrote some poetry. You'd run the risk of being embarrassed if people read it, because you're pouring your heart out and you're not mitigating it with any humor or anything.
Woody Allen
#42. Also, it was the morning and it seemed a little odd to be thinking about poetry before luncheon.
Barbara Pym
#43. He's probably out there in the hallway right now, composing bad poetry in his head." Michi cleared her throat, her voice taking on a breathless lilt:
"Pale Fox's Daughter,
Her cherry lips haunt my dreams.
Something, something, breasts ...
Jay Kristoff
#44. Bad breath and butt smell; that is prison, in a nutshell.
Raegan Butcher
#45. I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it:
The past, present, and future walk into a bar - it was tense.
Kelli Russell Agodon
#47. And, drunk with my own madness, I shouted at him furiously, Make life beautiful! Make life beautiful!
Charles Baudelaire
#48. Your friend's poetry is terrible," he said.
Clary blinked, caught momentarily off guard. "What?"
"I said his poetry was terrible. It sounds like he ate a dictionary and started vomiting up words at random.
Cassandra Clare
#49. I hear they make greeting cards now
to thank your therapist ... for NOTHING
Casey Renee Kiser
#51. Free from ivory-tower
the pencil twirls
across the footpath
Santosh Kalwar
#52. Once I knew what I was doing
I was there and with it;
I had the total knowing.
I Googled God and orgasmed
At the amount of Gods and
Monsters out there posted about.
Initially NO
#53. In Poetry class, Professor Sappho teaches us how to compose love ballads. She's a swell teacher and all but I'm not sure I understand her. She's always going on and on about her weekend trips with the other goddesses to the island of Lesbos.
Tai
#54. As a kid, I loved 'Godot' because of the poetry and the humor and the strangeness, but then as you get older, it's much more resonant.
Nathan Lane
#55. Prior to Wordsworth, humor was an essential part of poetry. I mean, they don't call them Shakespeare comedies for nothing.
William Collins
#56. Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee
And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me.
Robert Frost
#57. The poet is a faker / Who's so good at his act / He even fakes the pain / Of pain he feels in fact.
Fernando Pessoa
#58. Calico Kitty
My calico kitty
was painted and primed
she could prowl
the night away ~
without spending a dime...
Muse
#59. Did the harebell loose her girdle
To the lover bee,
Would the bee the harebell hallow
Much as formerly?
Emily Dickinson
#60. She dotes on poetry, sir. She adores it; I may say that her whole soul and mind are wound up, and entwined with it. She has produced some delightful pieces, herself, sir. You may have met with her 'Ode to an Expiring Frog,' sir.
Charles Dickens
#61. We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
#62. SAY EXACTLY
what you think
until you find that
no one is listening
then say
something else
Chocolate Waters
#63. I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane.
Allen Ginsberg
#64. A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.
Robert Frost
#66. I take this continent with me into the grave.
Ray Bradbury
#67. Maybe tranquility is the dirt under my nails. I know it's there but I never feel like digging it out.
Casey Renee Kiser
#69. Contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century.
Nick Hornby
#70. Sex with an ex
Is it ever really painless or just inviting stress?
I mean, really
Who does that?
Oh wait, I'm sure if they could, most everyone would ...
Natasha Ramsey
#73. Needle in a haystack's easy - just bring a magnet."
Eliot stared witheringly at Hardison. "You take the poetry out of everything."
"Says the man who'd just punch the haystack.
Keith R.A. DeCandido
#74. (1)BEING A POET
is like opening a car door
& exposing yourself.
(2)BEING A GOOD POET
is like opening the door
& exposing the passenger
as well.
Chocolate Waters
#75. There is nothing to me but you. I know it's pathetic but, oh darling, it's true.
F.K. Preston
#76. I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry.
James Tate
#77. When your heart starts to feel full again. I love FREE refills, and if a restaurant tries to double charge me, I refuse to write a love poem on their Yelp page.
-Karen Quan and Jarod Kintz
Karen Quan
#78. Violence can read like poetry. You just have to describe the act as if you're in love with the way your characters bleed.
F.K. Preston
#80. Oh, precious losing streak,
you're too cute for your own good.
I try to laugh about it
but my face is made of wood.
Casey Renee Kiser
#81. I had to send away for the
beacuse they are not available in any store.
They look the same as any sunglasses
with a light tint and silvery frames,
but instead of filtering out the harmful
rays of the sun.
they filter out the harmful sight of you
Billy Collins
#82. Apollo was god of poetry as well as archery, and I'd heard him recite in person. I'd almost rather get shot by an arrow
Rick Riordan
#83. A politician is an arse upon
which everyone has sat except a man
E. E. Cummings
#84. My heart aches for you! But don't despair! I am persuaded you will come about! Recollect what the poet says! I'm not sure which poet, but very likely it was Shakespeare, because it generally is, though why I can't imagine!
Georgette Heyer
#85. My creativity keeps me from starving. Humanity keeps my life mundane. Loving secures my love for life, but my imagination keeps me sane.
F.K. Preston
#86. Loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shape
of a helicopter the same size as the helicopter
and that's it's only skill
and it isn't good enough
but it's still amazing.
Tao Lin
#87. We got the spell exactly right. Except for the ingredients. And most of the poetry. And it probably wasn't the right time. And Gytha took most of it home for the cat, which couldn't of been proper.
Terry Pratchett
#88. McGough: I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've caught poetry.
Mr Bones: Oh really? Well, don't worry, sir - I used to suffer from short stories.
McGough: Really? When?
Mr Bones: Oh, once upon a time ...
Graham Chapman
#89. That was not sex. That was naked poetry.
Hank Moody
#90. Flames moved towards him
and dropped within
-
singed and marred
his tender skin ...
(the frightful plight tale)
Muse
#91. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.
Karl French
#92. A short poem from my book:
Perspective
Of course
there is a hell
she said
and it has
an observation deck;
so I may
stand and wave
to all those kind
souls below
who warned me
I would go there.
Michelle Hartman
#93. Rather a thousand times the county jail than to lie under this marble figure with wings and this granite pedestal bearing the words "pro patria." What do they mean anyway?
Edgar Lee Masters
#94. Lollypop
... the passion contained merely kisses
placed upon lips, neck and cheek
these young lovers of the castle
of which our fairytale speaks ...
Muse
#95. The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It's the tender understanding that we're living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there's quite a bit of wonder in that.
F.K. Preston
#96. There is nothing like scrubbing toilets for a living to make you question the choices you have made in life.
Raegan Butcher
#97. Prickly
When I'm feeling
porcupine-y,
I get nasty,
I get whiny.
Stay away or
I might stick you.
My sharp words are
quills to prick you.
Laura Purdie Salas
#98. All that is required of you is an open mind and a little patience.
F.K. Preston
#99. I've been writing poems since I was sixteen. Back then, poems were an obvious release for all the frustrations and anxieties associated with adolescence. Mostly, they were a way for me to impress girls, even though I never remember any girls being impressed.
Tony Magistrale
#100. I don't know if anyone has ever mentioned this, we need to be careful with drugs! They're not just all fun and games! And of course poetry would be immeasurably worse without humor.
Matthew Zapruder
