Opinions are made to be changed - or how is truth to be got at?
—Lord Byron
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
—Hal Borland
What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.
—Joseph Addison
A high-brow is someone who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso.
—A. P. Herbert
When love is at its best, one loves so much that he cannot forget.
—Helen Hunt Jackson
If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will.
—Greg McKeown
The poet lights the light and fades away. But the light goes on and on.
—Emily Dickinson
Poetry comes nearer to vital truth than history.
—Plato
It is difficult / to get the news from poems / yet men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.
—William Carlos Williams
I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.
—Marilyn Hacker
There is the view that poetry should improve your life. I think people confuse it with the Salvation Army.
—John Ashbery
I saw the book — didn't read it at all — didn't think it worth reading — fingered it a little. Mother thought as I did.
—George Whitman, brother of Walt, on Leaves of Grass
Most people ignore most poetry / because / most poetry ignores most people.
—Adrian Mitchell
Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement . . . says heaven and earth in one word . . . speaks of himself and his predicament as though for the first time. It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in half the time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.
—Christopher Fry
Words are loaded pistols.
—Jean-Paul Sartre