Greatest Poetry Quotes:

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

source: 1850 Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 43.

topic: Love, Valentines Day, Soul, Marriage Ceremony, Souls In Love

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.

- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

source: 1850 Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 43.

topic: Love, Sight, Grace, Marriage Ceremony, Writing Poems

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.

- William Wordsworth

source: Lyrical Ballads 2nd ed., preface (1802) See Dorothy Parker 24

topic: Powerful, Poetry, Feelings, Overflow, Great Poet

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep but I have promises to keep....

- Robert Frost

topic: Dark, Promise, Lovely, Marathon Running, Good Poetry

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

- Robert Frost

source: "Stopping byWoods on a Snowy Evening" l. 13 (1923)

topic: Love, Inspirational, Sleep, Marathon Running, Broken Promises

Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

source: "Ulysses" l. 65 (1842)

topic: Strong, Taken, Heart, Ulysses, Strong Bond

here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings

source: E. E. Cummings (2013). “Like a perhaps hand: Poems. Gedichte”, p.45, C.H.Beck

topic: I Love You, Spiritual, Stars, Wedding Poetry, Best Poetry

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

- Carl Sandburg

source: Carl Sandburg (2003). “The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg”, p.317, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Writing, Animal, Air, Great Poet, Poetry By Poets

All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.

- J. R. R. Tolkien

source: J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.127, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

topic: Faith, Strong, Kings, Inspiring Movie, Travel Light

One man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

- William Butler Yeats

topic: Love, Men, Soul, Overhead, Famous Love Poem

...How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face... "When You Are Old And Gray

- William Butler Yeats

source: The Countess Kathleen (1892) "When You Are Old"

topic: Love, Men, Bending Down, Overhead, Famous Love Poem

I've had it with these cheap sons of ***** who claim they love poetry but never buy a book.

- Kenneth Rexroth

topic: Book, Son, Love Poetry, Great Poet, Poetry By Poets

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

- Gilbert K. Chesterton

topic: Funny Inspirational, Food, Poetry, Delicious Food, Great Poet

If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.

- Emily Dickinson

topic: Taken, Writing, Poetry, Great Poet, Emily

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

- T. S. Eliot

topic: Death, Poetry, Religion, Apocalyptic, Hollow

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

- Robert Frost

topic: Poetry, Emotion, Found, Writing Poetry, Great Poet

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

- Robert Frost

topic: Hate, Thinking, Ice, Fire And Ice, Great Poetry

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.

- John Keats

source: Letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 238

topic: Inspirational, Reading Poetry, Remembrance, Singularity, Wording

Some of the greatest poetry is revealing to the reader the beauty in something that was so simple you had taken it for granted.

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

topic: Beauty, Taken, Simple, Greatest Poetry

Most people do not believe in anything very much and our greatest poetry is given to us by those who do.

- Cyril Connolly

topic: Believe, People, Given, Greatest Poetry

The truest and greatest Poetry, (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and distinguishable easily enough) can never again, in the English language, be express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest eloquence, or the truest power and passion.

- Walt Whitman

source: Walt Whitman (2012). “Specimen Days & Collect”, p.323, Courier Corporation

topic: Passion, Arbitrary, Rhyming, Greatest Poetry

But most love poetry is awful; nobody knows how to write good love poetry either. But that's not a reason not to write love poetry. Some of the best poetry ever written has been love poetry, and some of the greatest poetry ever written has been political poetry.

- W. S. Merwin

source: "An Interview with W. S. Merwin, Poet Laureate". Interview with Ed Rampell, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. October 25, 2010.

topic: Good Love, Writing, Political, Best Poetry, Love Poetry