It is easier to write an indifferent poem than to understand a good one.
Michel de Montaigne – Poetry
It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted.
George Eliot – Poetry, Music
Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls.
Voltaire – Poetry
Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read.
Voltaire – Poetry
Good poetry seems too simple and natural a thing that when we meet it we wonder that all men are not always poets. Poetry is nothing but healthy speech.
Henry David Thoreau – Poetry
Poetry implies the whole truth, philosophy expresses only a particle of it.
Henry David Thoreau – Poetry, Truth
Every man will be a poet if he can; otherwise a philosopher or man of science. This proves the superiority of the poet.
Henry David Thoreau – Poet
The great function of poetry is to give back to us the situations of our dreams.
Gaston Bachelard – Poetry
Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.
G.K. Chesterton – Poetic
The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.
G.K. Chesterton – Poet
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.
G.K. Chesterton – Cheese
A poet can survive everything but a misprint.
Oscar Wilde – Poet, Misprint
Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
William Hazlitt – Poetry, Language
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion – all in one.
John Ruskin – Poetry, Sight
Lyrical poetry is out for the time being, and something that is called rap or hip-hop is in. It is still poetry, and we can’t live without it. We need language to tell us who we are, how we feel, what we’re capable of – to explain the pains and glory of our existence.
