The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Horace3 quotes
I have erected a monument more lasting than bronze. — Horace · 23 BCIf you want me to weep, you must first feel grief yourself. — Horace · 19 BCNo verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by drinkers of water. — Horace · 20 BCSamuel Taylor Coleridge3 quotes
Prose = words in their best order;-poetry = the best words in the best order. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1834No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1817Poetry is certainly something more than good sense, but it must be good sense, at all events; just as a palace is more than a house, but it must be a house, at least. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge · 1834Robert Graves2 quotes
If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money. — Robert Graves · 1963Though philosophers like to define poetry as irrational fancy, for us it is practical, humorous, reasonable way of being ourselves. Of never acquiescing in a fraud; of never accepting the secondary-rate in poetry, painting, music, love, friends. — Robert Graves · 1969Stephane Mallarme2 quotes
To name an object is to take away three-fourths of the pleasure given by a poem. This pleasure consists in guessing little by little to suggest it, that is the ideal. — Stephane Mallarme · 1891Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only spiritual task there is. — Stephane Mallarme · 1884Archibald MacLeish1 quote
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds. — Archibald MacLeish · 1926Aristotle1 quote
So poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history, for while poetry is concerned with universal truth, history treats of particular facts. — Aristotle · 335 BCChristopher Fry1 quote
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. — Christopher Fry · 1950Cicero1 quote
There were poets before Homer. — Cicero · 46 BCDavid Hume1 quote
Poets...tho' liars by profession, always endeavour to give an air of truth to their fictions. — David Hume · 1739Gustave Flaubert1 quote
Prose was born yesterday-this is what we must tell ourselves. Poetry is pre-eminently the medium of past literatures. All the metrical combinations have been tried but nothing like this can be said of prose. — Gustave Flaubert · 1852Henrik Ibsen1 quote
Prose is for ideas,
Verse is for visions. — Henrik Ibsen · 1871Homer1 quote
Among all men on Earth, bards have a share of honor and reverence, because the Muse has taught them songs, and loves the race of bards. — Homer · 700 BCJohn F. Kennedy1 quote
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. — John F. Kennedy · 1963John Keating1 quote
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion and medicine, law, business, engineering. These are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. — John Keating · 1989Langston Hughes1 quote
For poems are like rainbows: they escape you quickly. — Langston Hughes · 1940Leonardo da Vinci1 quote
Painting is poetry which is seen and not heard, and poetry is a painting which is heard but not seen. — Leonardo da Vinci · 1519Mark Strand1 quote
A truly exciting poem has something evasive or mysterious at the core, and it succeeds in suggesting to us that the core is essential to our being. — Mark Strand · 1979Matthew Arnold1 quote
The grand style arises in poetry, when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats with simplicity or with severity a serious subject. — Matthew Arnold · 1862Octavio Paz1 quote
I learned precision of language from Japanese poetry. — Octavio PazPablo Neruda1 quote
I did not come here to solve anything.
I came to sing,
And for you to sing with me. — Pablo Neruda · 1948Percy Bysshe Shelley1 quote
Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. — Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1822T.S. Eliot1 quote
The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn. — T.S. Eliot · 1920Theodor Adorno1 quote
To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. — Theodor Adorno · 1951Thomas Babington Macaulay1 quote
As civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines... In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. — Thomas Babington Macaulay · 1825Thomas Wyatt1 quote
For when this song is sung and past,
My lute, be still, for I have done. — Thomas Wyatt · 1557Vincent van Gogh1 quote
Poetry surrounds us everywhere, but putting it on paper is, alas, not so easy as looking at it. — Vincent van Gogh · 1883William Wordsworth1 quote
Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility. — William Wordsworth · 1802