Poetry Quotes

I define poetry as the rhythmical creation of beauty in words

Genuine literature exists only where it is created, and not where it is discussed

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream

I am out with lanterns, looking for myself

Imaginary gardens with real toads in them

And when wind and winter harden all the loveless land, it will whisper of the garden, you will understand

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life

No one else can write the poems that are inside your head

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood

Poetry is what gets lost in translation

We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry

To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower

A word after a word after a word is power

The universe is made of stories, not of atoms

I am an invisible man. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked

Every poem is a momentary stay against confusion

Let us walk through this world a little slower and look a little closer

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes

The woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best

At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet

The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in

A line will take us hours maybe; yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstitching has been naught

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; pack up the moon and dismantle the sun

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman

I am the doubled man, the living image with two faces, one showing what is seen and one what is dreamed

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception

Out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry

I saw dawn creep across the sky and all the world was gray. Young lovers now, come out to die, the dawn is cold and gray

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death

Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality

There is no Frigate like a Book to take us Lands away

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world

There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry

I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams

And you shall above all things be glad and young. For if you’re young, whatever life you wear, it will become you; and if you are glad whatever’s living will yourself become

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful

Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds

The poet is the priest of the invisible

Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious

Risk something that matters

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper

For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice

The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven

What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d

Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world

The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life

Poetry is not the record of an event: it is an event

Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' Let us go and make our visit

To name an object is to suppress three-quarters of the enjoyment of the poem

I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need it

Mine alone is the country of my mind

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language