Poetry is a profound form of literature that uses a distinctive style and rhythm. And poems are born from the intensity and quality of emotions. The raw power and quality of a person's feelings provide the essential material and drive for creating verse. May these quotes and phrases about poetry inspire you to love poetry and give you a deep insight that will lead the way to a more meaningful life.
1. “Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.” – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
2. “You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.” – Carol Ann Duffy
3. “The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.” – Allen Ginsberg
4. “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” – Carl Sandburg
5. “Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.” – Samuel Johnson
6. “Poetry is this gorgeous, complex history rendered in verse and song, a blueprint that can lead you back into the world after you've walked into air.” – Robin Coste Lewis
7. “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.” – Edgar Allan Poe
8. “You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.” – Joseph Joubert
9. “Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.” – Thomas Hardy
10. “Poetry is the mother-tongue of the human race.” – Johann Georg Hamann
11. “Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.” – William Cullen Bryant
12. “Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.” – Yevgeny Yevtushenko
13. “The crown of literature is poetry.” – W. Somerset Maugham
14. “Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.” – Gustave Flaubert
15. “Poetry and beauty are always making peace. When you read something beautiful you find coexistence; it breaks walls down.” – Mahmoud Darwish
16. “Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.” – Carl Sandburg
17. “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” – Plato
18. “Poetry must be made by all and not by one.” – Comte de Lautreamont
19. “Every single soul is a poem.” – Michael Franti
20. “Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them.” – Dennis Gabor
21. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” – William Wordsworth
22. “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” – Robert Frost
23. “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” – Aristotle
24. “A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings, about human feelings and frailties.” – Anne Stevenson
25. “When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” – John F. Kennedy
26. “Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.” – Umberto Eco
27. “Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” – Khalil Gibran
28. “Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.” – Mark Strand
29. “Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.” – Charles Simic
30. “Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.” – Georges Braque
More Famous Poetry Quotes about Life
31. “How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.” – Robert Penn Warren
32. “Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.” – Robert Fitzgerald
33. “Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.” – Allen Ginsberg
34. “In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.” – Abbas Kiarostami
35. “Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley
36. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” – T. S. Eliot
37. “Love is the poetry of the senses.” – Honore de Balzac
38. “Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.” – Mary Oliver
39. “Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.” – Adrienne Rich
40. “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” – Novalis
41. “Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.” – Walter Scott
42. “Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.” – William Hazlitt
43. “Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.” – Horace Walpole
44. “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.” – Allen Ginsberg
45. “Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.” – Mary Oliver
46. “Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.” – T. S. Eliot
47. “Personality is everything in art and poetry.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
48. “Poetry is emotion, passion, love, and grief, everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.” – F. Sionil Jose
49. “The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.” – James Gates Percival
50. “Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.” – Matthew Arnold
51. “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” – William Butler Yeats
52. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” – Sylvia Plath
53. “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
54. “A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
55. “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” – Leonard Cohen
56. “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” – Robert Frost
57. “Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.” – Dylan Thomas
58. “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” – William Butler Yeats
59. “Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.” – Carl Sandburg
60. “As I write, I create myself again and again.” – Joy Harjo
61. “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” – Rita Dove
62. “Take your materials from what is around you—if you see a dandelion, write about that; if it’s misty, write about the mist. The materials for poetry are all about you in profusion.” – Masaoka Shiki
63. “Poetry is an act of peace.” – Pablo Neruda
64. “I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however isolated or unheard you may feel, if you have the need to write poetry, are compelled to write it, you go on, whether there is resonance or not.” – Adrienne Rich
65. “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
66. “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” – Audre Lorde
67. “Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” – Lawrence Ferlinghetti
68. “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” – Rumi
69. “Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.” – Eli Khamarov
70. “To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.” – Octavio Paz
71. “There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.” – Edward Young
72. “Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.” – Natalie Merchant
73. “If you can’t be a poet, be the poem.” – David Carradine
74. “Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.” – Yusef Komunyakaa
75. “People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can’t catch it, can’t control it. They prefer coherence, what’s blunt and has clarity.” – Elia Suleiman
Share these Inspirational Poetry Quotes and Sayings with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.
2. “You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart.” – Carol Ann Duffy
3. “The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.” – Allen Ginsberg
4. “Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” – Carl Sandburg
5. “Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.” – Samuel Johnson
6. “Poetry is this gorgeous, complex history rendered in verse and song, a blueprint that can lead you back into the world after you've walked into air.” – Robin Coste Lewis
7. “I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of beauty.” – Edgar Allan Poe
8. “You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you.” – Joseph Joubert
9. “Poetry is emotion put into measure. The emotion must come by nature, but the measure can be acquired by art.” – Thomas Hardy
11. “Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.” – William Cullen Bryant
12. “Poetry is like a bird, it ignores all frontiers.” – Yevgeny Yevtushenko
13. “The crown of literature is poetry.” – W. Somerset Maugham
14. “Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry.” – Gustave Flaubert
16. “Poetry is the opening and closing of a door, leaving those who look through to guess about what is seen during the moment.” – Carl Sandburg
17. “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” – Plato
18. “Poetry must be made by all and not by one.” – Comte de Lautreamont
19. “Every single soul is a poem.” – Michael Franti
21. “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” – William Wordsworth
22. “A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” – Robert Frost
23. “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.” – Aristotle
24. “A poem might be defined as thinking about feelings, about human feelings and frailties.” – Anne Stevenson
26. “Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.” – Umberto Eco
27. “Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” – Khalil Gibran
28. “Pain is filtered in a poem so that it becomes finally, in the end, pleasure.” – Mark Strand
29. “Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them.” – Charles Simic
30. “Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.” – Georges Braque
More Famous Poetry Quotes about Life
31. “How do poems grow? They grow out of your life.” – Robert Penn Warren
32. “Poetry is at least an elegance and at most a revelation.” – Robert Fitzgerald
33. “Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.” – Allen Ginsberg
34. “In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you.” – Abbas Kiarostami
35. “Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds.” – Percy Bysshe Shelley
36. “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” – T. S. Eliot
37. “Love is the poetry of the senses.” – Honore de Balzac
38. “Poetry isn't a profession, it's a way of life. It's an empty basket; you put your life into it and make something out of that.” – Mary Oliver
39. “Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.” – Adrienne Rich
40. “Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason.” – Novalis
41. “Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom and makes the heroic virtues hereditary.” – Walter Scott
42. “Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life.” – William Hazlitt
43. “Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.” – Horace Walpole
44. “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.” – Allen Ginsberg
45. “Poetry is one of the ancient arts, and it began as did all the fine arts, within the original wilderness of the earth.” – Mary Oliver
46. “Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.” – T. S. Eliot
47. “Personality is everything in art and poetry.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
48. “Poetry is emotion, passion, love, and grief, everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.” – F. Sionil Jose
49. “The world is full of poetry. The air is living with its spirit; and the waves dance to the music of its melodies, and sparkle in its brightness.” – James Gates Percival
50. “Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.” – Matthew Arnold
51. “Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” – William Butler Yeats
52. “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” – Sylvia Plath
53. “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
54. “A poet is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.” – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
55. “Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.” – Leonard Cohen
56. “To be a poet is a condition, not a profession.” – Robert Frost
57. “Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own.” – Dylan Thomas
58. “We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry.” – William Butler Yeats
59. “Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.” – Carl Sandburg
60. “As I write, I create myself again and again.” – Joy Harjo
61. “Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.” – Rita Dove
62. “Take your materials from what is around you—if you see a dandelion, write about that; if it’s misty, write about the mist. The materials for poetry are all about you in profusion.” – Masaoka Shiki
63. “Poetry is an act of peace.” – Pablo Neruda
64. “I guess what concerns me always is the need for a field, a rich compost, for any art to flourish. But however isolated or unheard you may feel, if you have the need to write poetry, are compelled to write it, you go on, whether there is resonance or not.” – Adrienne Rich
65. “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
66. “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.” – Audre Lorde
67. “Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.” – Lawrence Ferlinghetti
68. “Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” – Rumi
69. “Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition.” – Eli Khamarov
70. “To read a poem is to hear it with our eyes; to hear it is to see it with our ears.” – Octavio Paz
71. “There is something about poetry beyond prose logic, there is mystery in it, not to be explained but admired.” – Edward Young
72. “Poetry comes alive to me through recitation.” – Natalie Merchant
73. “If you can’t be a poet, be the poem.” – David Carradine
74. “Poetry helps me understand who I am. It helps me understand the world around me. But above all, what poetry has taught me is the fact that I need to embrace mystery in order to be completely human.” – Yusef Komunyakaa
75. “People in power tend to find poetry dangerous to them because it is dislocating, they can’t catch it, can’t control it. They prefer coherence, what’s blunt and has clarity.” – Elia Suleiman
Share these Inspirational Poetry Quotes and Sayings with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.