Literature

"Verba togæ sequeris, junctura callidus acri, Ore teres modico, pallentes radere mores Doctus, et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo."

"Musæo contigens cuncta lepore."

"The merit of poetry, in its wildest forms, still consists in its truth—truth conveyed to the understanding, not directly by the words, but circuitously by means of imaginative associations, which serve as its conductors."

"We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age."

"These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver Omar plucked them from their bed, FitzGerald strung them on an English thread."

"It ["The Ancient Mariner"] is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland."

"For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it."

"Lap me in soft Lydian airs, Married to immortal verse, Such as the meeting soul may pierce, In notes, with many a winding bout Of linkèd sweetness long drawn out."

"Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta, Quale sopor fessis in gramine."

"Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men."

"Yea, marry, now it is somewhat, for now it is rhyme; before it was neither rhyme nor reason."

"Jewels five-words-long, That on the stretch'd forefinger of all Time Sparkle for ever."

"One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose."

"Wisdom married to immortal verse."

"And so no force, however great, Can strain a cord, however fine, Into a horizontal line That shall be absolutely straight."

"Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good."

"Give lettered pomp to teeth of Time, So "Bonnie Doon" but tarry: Blot out the epic's stately rhyme, But spare his Highland Mary!"

"The vision and the faculty divine; Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse."

"To connect the external object with the internal emotion is the sweetest privilege of poetry."

"Poetry is the immortality of earth: where shall we look for our noblest thoughts, and our tenderest feelings, but in its eternal pages?"

"There's a reason for poetry... Poetry is a very nonlinear use of language, where the meaning is more than just the sum of the parts. And science requires that it be nothing more than the sum of the parts. And just the fact that there's stuff to explain out there that's more than the sum of the parts means that the traditional approach, just characterizing the parts and the relations, is not going to be adequate for capturing the essence of many systems that you would like to be able to do. That's not to say that there isn't a way to do it in a more scientific way than poetry, but I just like the feeling that culturally there's going to be more of something like poetry in the future of science."

"We deny that poetry is fiction; its merit and its power lie alike in its truth:"

"1968 was one of those rare times in America when poetry seemed to matter. Telephone service in New York City in 1968 offered a “dial-a-poem.” A government pilot program that year sent poets around the country to public high schools to give readings and discussions. The response was wildly enthusiastic. In Detroit, poet Donald Hall was trapped in a hallway at Amelia Earhart Junior High School by excited students shouting, “Say us a poem!” Obligingly he shouted one, but then the crowd had doubled with new arrivals and he had to read it again."

"Poetry: play on words."

"Poetry should begin with emotion in the poet, and end with the same emotion in the reader. The poem is simply the instrument of transferance"

"The imagination, which is the source of poetry, has in every country been the beginning as well as the ornament of civilization. It civilizes because it refines."

"Love has its priests in the poets, and one hears at times a poet's voice which worthily extols it."

"For me, the prospect of expression through poetry transforms solitary silence and an empty page into sheer pleasure. I feel unafraid, knowing I can break all the rules, invent my own forms. No matter what persona I take on, my voice remains accessible and recognizable. There is no artifice, no pose, no sense that I have to transform myself into someone else. As a poet, I remain comfortably disrespectful. I experiment, take risks which sometimes work and sometimes don't."

"what, in essence, is poetry. To me it seems that it is a magical transporter through time and space because it manages to contain the present, the past, even the future. Poetry is also the only literary medium that allows for the deformation of reality in service of artistic vision while at the same time endowing that vision with a marked purpose defined by all the attributes of reality."

"When power leads man towards arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment."

"In Poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. 1st. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by Singularity—it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance—2nd Its touches of Beauty should never be half way thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural natural too him—shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilight—but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it—and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all."

"I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. … Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree."

"If more politicians knew poetry, and more poets knew politics, I am convinced the world would be a little better place in which to live."

"Novels are about other people and poems are about yourself"

"The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights."

"Still may syllables jar with time, Still may reason war with rhyme, Resting never!"

"What’s important about poetry in the context of leadership is that most of the time, power has to do with dominance. But poetry is never about dominance. Poetry is powerful but it cannot even aspire to dominate anyone. It means making a connection. That’s what it means."

"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason."

"A poem is good if it contains a new analogy and startles the reader out of the habit of treating words as counters."

"Poetry, with its brevity and precision, is a natural training ground, or whetstone, for critical thinking. All of its devices, in addition to the highly accessible metaphor and image, are consummate communicators and powerful persuaders, for good or ill—mood, tone, personification, diction, allusion, symbol, and so many more—and all, when diligently pursued engender, or sharpen, critical thought, food for the brain as well as the heart."

"Poetry helps me to imagine freedom...Poetry can help lift the ceiling from our brains so that we can imagine liberation."

"Sir, what is Poetry? Why, Sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is: but it is not easy to tell what it is."

"For dear to gods and men is sacred song. Self-taught I sing; by Heaven and Heaven alone, The genuine seeds of poesy are sown."

"another wonderful thing that happens in Chinese language, not now maybe, but in classical times, was a poet is somebody who can write and sing and paint his poem. See how integrated that is? All those parts of your body are connected. You're not fragmented. Even now, the poets still do calligraphy."

"no verses which are written by water-drinkers can please, or be long-lived"

"Poetry is a form of magic for me."

"In a world dominated by the discourses of globalization a book of translations forces us to reflect and meditate, and it alerts us not only to differences but also connections and intersections among communities, religions and ethnicities. That there are similarities and there are difference. Both are in fact important. Context shapes the way one lives. The subject matter too could be different. But the meditative dimension, the concern with belonging, and with identity and rootedness are similar."

"Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out … and perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure."

"How we have been pulled from the land! And how poetry has worked hard to set us free, uncage us, keep us from split tongues that mimic the voices of our captors. It returns us to our land. Poetry is a string of words that parades without a permit. It is a lockbox of words to put an ear to as we try to crack the safe of language, listening for the right combination, the treasure inside. It is life resonating. It is sometimes called Prayer, Soothsaying, Complaint, Invocation, Proclamation, Testimony, Witness."

"The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless-about to be birthed, but already felt. That distillation of experience from which true poetry springs births thought as dream births concept, as feeling births idea, as knowledge births (precedes) understanding."