poetry Quotes

As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

Rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our meter.

In the French language, there is a great gulf between prose and poetry; in English, there is hardly any difference. It is a splendid privilege of the great literary languages Greek, Latin, and French that they possess a prose. English has not this privilege. There is no prose in English.

Verse in itself does not constitute poetry. Verse is only an elegant vestment for a beautiful form. Poetry can express itself in prose, but it does so more perfectly under the grace and majesty of verse. It is poetry of soul that inspires noble sentiments and noble actions as well as noble writings.

The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both.

A noble soul and real poetic talent are almost always inseparable.

A poet who is a bad man is a degraded being, baser and more culpable than a bad man who is not a poet.

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.

Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.