Top 100 The Poet Quotes
#1. The poet is a pure spring from which all thirsty souls may drink.
Kahlil Gibran
#2. The best bribe which London offers to-day to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast variety of people and conditions, one can believe there is room for persons of romantic character to exist, and that the poet, the mystic, and the hero may hope to confront their counterparts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#3. The first part of my name, Khalil Gibran, seems to be paying huge dividends in terms of the artistic life of the poet from whom my name was inspired.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad
#4. Whatever is language is poetic language and if the word required by the poet does not exist in his known language then it is up to him to discover it.
Lenore Kandel
#5. Then read from the treasured volume the poem of thy choice, and lend to the rhyme of the poet the beauty of thy voice.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#6. You will find the poet who wrings the heart of the world, or the foremost captain of his time, driving a bargain or paring a potato, just as you would do.
Rebecca Harding Davis
#7. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion.
Albert Einstein
#8. The poet Emily Dickinson said that nature is a haunted house, while art is a house that tries to be haunted. She was born and died in the same room.
Simon Van Booy
#9. A man's most useful friend and fearsome foe is the poet.
John Barth
#10. Valmiki the Poet held all the moving world inside a water drop in his hand.
The gods and saints from heaven looked down on Lanka,
And Valmiki looked down at the gods in the morning of Time.
Valmiki
#11. To be a poet, requires a mythology of the self. The self described is the poet self, to which the daily self (and others) are often ruthlessly sacrificed. The poet self is the real self, the other one is the carrier; and when the poet self dies, the person dies.
Susan Sontag
#13. The relation between a poet and audience is really insignificant. What matters is the poet is hearing something that he is broadcasting. And whether there is anybody with a receiver isn't the reason he does it. He hopes there is somebody receiving it.
Peter Davison
#14. The music is the shining path over which the poet travels to bring his song to the world.
Lotte Lehmann
#15. Also known as Judith Neville Lytton, the author of Toy Dogs and Their Ancestors had some illustrious ancestors of her own. Lady Wentworth was the great granddaughter of Lord Byron the poet,
Michael Brandow
#16. One travels so as to learn once more how to marvel at life in the way a child does. And blessed be the poet, the artist who knows how to keep alive his sense of wonder.
Ella Maillart
#17. An occasion, catalyst, or tripwire?permits the poet to reach into herself and haul up whatever nugget of the human condition distracts her at the moment, something that can't be reached in any other way.
Diane Ackerman
#18. The job of the poet is to use language effectively, his own language, the only language which is to him authentic.
William Carlos Williams
#19. Cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones, wrote the poet Richard Wilbur, and even in the atomic era it was hard to see how the physicist's swarming clouds of particles could give rise to the hard-edged world of everyday sight and touch.
James Gleick
#20. Identifying Israel with Jewry obscures the existence of the small but important post-Zionist movement in Israel, including the philosophers Adi Ophir and Anat Biletzki, the sociologist Uri Ram, the professor of theatre Avraham Oz and the poet Yitzhak Laor.
Judith Butler
#22. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning. The
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
#24. The poet, distracted by politics, asks of poetry that it make itself useful like metal or flour, that it get ready to stain its face with coal dust and fight body to body.
Eduardo Galeano
#25. The Poet makes himself a seer through a long, vast and painstaking derangement of all the senses
Arthur Rimbaud
#26. Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.
Stephen Spender
#27. The poet exposes himself to the risk. All that has been said about poetry, all that he has learned about poetry, is only a partial assurance.
A.R. Ammons
#28. The poet's first rule must be never to bore his readers; and his best way of keeping this rule is never to bore himself-which, of course, means to write only when he has something urgent to say.
Robert Graves
#30. I understand the phrase "Honor the Women" all too well: the poet has probably a wife of his own, but he prefers to honor another.
Franz Grillparzer
#31. Good science and good art are always about a condition of awe ... I don't think there is any other function for the poet or the scientist in the human tribe but the astonishment of the soul.
Derek Walcott
#32. In the history of old Jewish literature there was never any basic difference between the poet and the prophet. Our ancient poetry often became law and a way of life.
Isaac Bashevis Singer
#33. When I think of the meaning of food, I always remember these lines by the poet William Carlos Williams, which seem to me merely honest: There is nothing to eat, seek it where you will, but of the body of the Lord. The blessed plants and the sea, yield it to the imagination intact.
Wendell Berry
#34. There are no barriers to poetry or prophecy; by their nature they are barrier-breakers, bursts of perceptions, lines into infinity. If the poet lies about his vision he lies about himself and in himself; this produces a true barrier.
Lenore Kandel
#35. When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing.
Raymond Queneau
#36. The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James
#37. The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.
Federico Garcia Lorca
#38. I am the scroll of the poet behind which samurai swords are being sharpened.
Lester Cole
#39. There is an old Latin quotation in regard to the poet which says 'Poeta nascitur non fit' the translation of which is - the poet is born, not made.
Joseph Devlin
#40. And the greatest of the poets, when he defined the poet, did not say that he gave us the universe or the absolute or the infinite; but, in his own larger language, a local habitation and a name.
G.K. Chesterton
#41. God is nothing but creativity. So wherever there is a sign of creativity, God has a signature there. He has already been there. Maybe even the poet does not know, but he has been touched by something from the beyond.
Rajneesh
#42. Because we are all of an oral tradition in our beginning histories, the voice of the poet in this particular society will be heard.
John Trudell
#43. Never mind what lies behind Death, Mr. Bast, but be sure that the poet and the musician and the tramp will be happier in it than the man who has never learnt to say, 'I am I.
E. M. Forster
#44. Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.
Emile M. Cioran
#45. The poet is a pretender. / He pretends so completely, / that he even pretends that it is pain / the pain he really feels.
Fernando Pessoa
#47. The poet believed that 'Beauty' first entered the world not at its creation, nor with the first garden, the first sunrise, the birth of the first man and woman and their first sexual act. The poet believed that 'Beauty' entered the world the day the first child blushed.
Roman Payne
#48. The philosopher proves that the philosopher exists. The poet merely enjoys existence.
Wallace Stevens
#49. God is the very creative energy of existence - creativity rather than a creator. He is not the poet but the poetry, not the dancer but the dance, not the flower but the fragrance.
Rajneesh
#51. A wise man can and should stand above his times, not so the poet, but he should be their apex.
Franz Grillparzer
#52. Poetry colors beings, objects, landscapes and sensations with a kind of new and particular light, which is in fact that of the poet's emotions.
Anne Hebert
#54. The painter is, as to the execution of his work, a mechanic; but as to his conception and spirit and design he is hardly below even the poet.
Friedrich Schiller
#55. Feminine psychology is admittedly odd, sir. The poet Pope ... "
"Never mind about the poet Pope, Jeeves."
"No, sir."
"There are times when one wants to hear all about the poet Pope and times when one doesn't."
"Very true, sir.
P.G. Wodehouse
#56. Imagination, which is the Eldorado of the poet and of the novel-writer, often proves the most pernicious gift to the individuals who compose the talkers instead of the writers in society.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington
#57. Poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult ... The poet must become more and more comprehensive, more allusive, more indirect, in order to force, to dislocate if necessary, language into its meaning.
T. S. Eliot
#58. As I said, many. They are passing even now. An endless parade of them. They smile, they bow, a child wags his tongue like a dog's tail. Some of them speak. Do you know the poet George Seferis?
Stephen King
#59. The poet will not be satisfied with recording, the poet will have to transform.
Jeanette Winterson
#60. The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.
Thomas Hardy
#61. The "truth" is the poem itself. Just because someone writes a poem about a feeling she has does not mean that the feeling will stay forever. The truth of the emotion of the poem remains, even if the particular truth of the poet changes.
Denise Duhamel
#62. The poet existed among the cave men; he will exist among men of the atomic age, for he is an inherent part of man. Even religions have been born from the need for poetry, which is a spiritual need, and it is through the grace of poetry that the divine spark lives forever in the human flint.
Saint-John Perse
#63. The emperor would prefer the poet to keep away from politics, the emperor's domain, so that he can manage things the way he likes.
Chinua Achebe
#64. How does the poet transform his banal thoughts (are not most thoughts banal?) into such stunning forms, into beauty?
Joyce Carol Oates
#65. The revelatory or visionary is the province of the 'private' artist, who in order to render his personal world comprehensible or even tolerable, must force others to believe in it and therefore share it. It is said that 'the poet does not wish to be understood, but to be believed.
Kenneth Coutts-Smith
#66. "You know that it is quite preposterous of you to chase rainbows," said the sane person to the poet. "Yet it would be rather beautiful if I did one day manage to catch one," mused the poet.
Thomas William Hodgson Crosland
#67. The dog (the poet) is on top of a locomotive," ... "He's got a box full of track, and he's frenetically laying down track in front of the train.
Billy Collins
#68. But metre itself implies a passion , i.e. a state of excitement, both in the Poet's mind, & is expected in that of the Reader.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#69. All poetry has to do is to make a strong communication. All the poet has to do is listen. The poet is not an important fellow. There will also be another poet.
Stevie Smith
#70. And if other old men must be willing, at the end, to push up off their deathbed and adventure out into the unknown, how much more willing must that man be whose whole life has been just such a daily exercise of adventuring, even in the stillness of his own garden? I mean, the poet.
David Malouf
#71. Wine it is the milk of Venus, And the poet's horse accounted: Ply it and you all are mounted.
Ben Jonson
#72. Ovid lies here, the poet, skilled in love's gentle sport;
By his own talents he worked his undoing.
Oh, you who pass by, if ever you have loved,
Think it not a burden to wish him calm repose.
Ovid
#73. The philosopher's soul dwells in his head, the poet's soul is in his heart; the singer's soul lingers about his throat, but the soul of the dancer abides in all her body.
Kahlil Gibran
#74. Did the poet use red to symbolize blood? Anger? Lust? Or is the wheelbarrow simply red because red sounded better than black?
Jay Asher
#75. The poet's perfect expression is the token of a perfect experience; what he says in the best possible way he has felt in the best possible way, that is, completely.
John Drinkwater
#76. The sensual man conforms thoughts to things;
the poet conforms things to his thoughts.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#77. I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I translate
into a new tongue.
Walt Whitman
#79. "It is part of the poet's work to show each man what he sees but does not know he sees."
Edith Sitwell
#80. For what is the gift of the poet and the artist except to see the sights which others cannot see and to hear the sounds that others cannot hear?
Ouida
#81. A perfect poem owes its perfection to sounding the voice of the heart and the melodies of the conscience, as well as its ability to reflect the considerations, beliefs, opinions, and horizons of thought of the poet, but not due to its formal or mental aspects.
M. Fethullah Gulen
#82. I started to think about the abyss that separates the poet from the reader and the next thing I knew I was deeply depressed.
Roberto Bolano
#83. Before I went on stage at Kyle Hutton's Real Life Real Music Festival, I heard one of his songwriting students, Abbey Hirvela, sing; she was in the poet's saddle and riding that horse like she owned it. She was good! I probably ruined her by showing her how to make an E chord without the 3rd though.
Ray Wylie Hubbard
#84. The sun set beyond thesea, so says the poet - and when a poet mentions a sea, we have to accept it; no harm in letting a poet describe his vision, no need to question his geography.
R.K. Narayan
#85. The poet, while creating anew, is likely to be in a sense restoring something old.
Owen Barfield
#86. To Beatrice- My love flew like a butterfly Until death swooped down like a bat As the poet Emma Montana McElroy said: 'That's the end of that
Daniel Handler
#87. But the lover's power is the poet's power. He can make love from all the common strings with which this world is strung.
Amelia Barr
#88. When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.
Umberto Eco
#89. My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business.
John Krasinski
#90. American poetry, like American painting, is always personal with an emphasis on the individuality of the poet.
Diane Wakoski
#91. The light that never was, on sea or land; The consecration, and the Poet's dream.
William Wordsworth
#92. Not the bee upon the blossom,
In the pride o' sunny noon;
Not the little sporting fairy,
All beneath the simmer moon;
Not the poet, in the moment
Fancy lightens in his e'e,
Kens the pleasure, feels the rapture,
That thy presence gi'es to me.
Robert Burns
#93. The condition of mankind is, and always has been, so miserable and depraved that, if anyone were to say to the poet: "For God's sake stop singing and do something useful like putting on the kettle or fetching bandages," what just reason could he give for refusing?
W. H. Auden
#94. Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.
Hesiod
#95. A man sees only what concerns him ... How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different departments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects!
Henry David Thoreau
#96. We met with the poet Frank O'Hara, who was a link between Upper and Lower Bohemia, and who worked at the Museum of Modern Art, where we had hoped to do the readings.
David Amram
#97. The Poet's leaves are gathered one by one,
In the slow process of the doubtful years.
Bayard Taylor
#98. The poet drafts his work as a writer but edits it as a sculptor, with his pen as a chisel and his mind a hammer.
Agona Apell
#100. My focus is on the reader and that the poet's job is not to inspire himself or herself. The poet's job is to inspire some future reader.
Edward Hirsch
