63 Inspiring Poetry Quotes

Poetry has a unique power to touch the soul, evoke emotions, and spark inspiration. It captures the essence of life in its most distilled form, using words to paint vivid pictures and convey profound truths. Whether you're an avid poetry enthusiast or someone seeking a fresh perspective, diving into the world of poetry quotes can be a transformative experience. In this collection of 63 inspiring poetry quotes, you'll find lines that encourage reflection, stir creativity, and offer comfort. Each quote serves as a reminder of the beauty and complexity of human experience, inviting you to explore the depths of language and emotion. Join us on this journey through the poetic lens, where every quote tells a story and every story is an invitation to dream.

1. “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

2. “Whereas story is processed in the mind in a straightforward manner, poetry bypasses rational thought and goes straight to the limbic system and lights it up like a brushfire. It's the crack cocaine of the literary world.” - Jasper Fforde

3. “How happy is the little stoneThat rambles in the road alone,And doesn't care about careers,And exigencies never fears;Whose coat of elemental brownA passing universe put on;And independent as the sun,Associates or glows alone,Fulfilling absolute decreeIn casual simplicity.” - Emily Dickinson

4. “O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, Let it not be among the jumbled heap Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,— Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell, May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep ’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell. But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee, Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d, Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.To Solitude” - John Keats

5. “Such was a poet and shall be and is-who'll solve the depths of horror to defend a sunbeam's architecture with his life: and carve immortal jungles of despair to hold a mountain's heartbeat in his hand.” - E. E. Cummings

6. “If it ain't a pleasure, it ain't a poem.” - William Carlos Williams

7. “We flatter those we scarcely know,We please the fleeting guest;And deal full many a thoughtless blow,To those who love us best.” - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

8. “A billion stars go spinning through the night,glittering above your head,But in you is the presence that will bewhen all the stars are dead.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

9. “An editorial in the Los Angeles Times [1923] wistfully asked, 'Will eating chestnuts by crackling log fires become one of the lost arts preserved by a devoted people only in poetry and romance?” - Susan Freinkel

10. “Freud thought that a psychosis was a waking dream, and that poets were daydreamers too, but I wonder if the reverse is not as often true, and that madness is a fiction lived in like a rented house” - William Gass

11. “My Muse sits forlornShe wishes she had not been bornShe sits in the coldNo word she says is ever told.” - Stevie Smith

12. “Raise from your bed of languorRaise from your bed of dismayYour friends will not come tomorrowAs they did not come todayYou must rely on yourself, they said,You must rely on yourself,Oh but I find this pill so bitter said the poor manAs he took it from the shelfCrying, O sweet Death come to meCome to me for company,Sweet Death it is only you I canConstrain for company.” - Stevie Smith

13. “Only poetry isn't shit.” - Roberto Bolaño

14. “When you're a student of poetry, you're lucky if you don't realize how untalented you are until you get a little better. Otherwise, you would just stop.” - Tony Hoagland (Editor)

15. “Darkling I listen; and, for many a timeI have been half in love with easeful Death,Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,To take into the air my quiet breath.” - John Keats

16. “…Perses, hear me out on justice, and take what I have to say to heart; cease thinking of violence. For the son of Kronos, Zeus, has ordained this law to men: that fishes and wild beasts and winged birds should devour one another, since there is no justice in them; but to mankind he gave justice which proves for the best.” - Hesiod

17. “Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” - Edgar Allan Poe

18. “With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me.” - George Santayana

19. “Poetry makes nothing happen.” - W.H. Auden

20. “I came in haste with cursing breath,And heart of hardest steel;But when I saw thee cold in death,I felt as man should feel.For when I look upon that face,That cold, unheeding, frigid brown,Where neither rage nor fear has place,By Heaven! I cannot hate thee now!” - Alfred Lord Tennyson

21. “that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it getsI wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind” - Ikkyu

22. “How do I feel today? I feel as unfit as an unfiddle,And it is the result of a certain turbulence in the mind and an uncertain burbulence in the middle.What was it, anyway, that angry thing that flew at me?I am unused to banshees crying Boo at me.Your wife can’t be a banshee—Or can she?” - Ogden Nash

23. “It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.” - Ezra Pound

24. “There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.” - Joy Harjo

25. “Inebriate of Air — am I —And Debauchee of Dew —Reeling — thro endless summer days —From Inns of Molten Blue —” - Emily Dickinson

26. “Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie,O, what a panic's in thy breastie! ” - Robert Burns

27. “I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star ... And I dance.” - Arthur Rimbaud

28. “Calligraphy may well be simply an artistic version of another form, that is the ideograms which make up the poem, but then not only does it reflect the character and temperament of the artist but . . . also betrays his heart rate, his breathing.” - Dai Sijie

29. “Voodoo GirlHer skin is white cloth,and she's all sewn apartand she has many colored pinssticking out of her heart.She has many different zombieswho are deeply in her trance.She even has a zombiewho was originally from France.But she knows she has a curse on her,a curse she cannot win.For if someone getstoo close to her,the pins stick farther in.” - Tim Burton

30. “if everything happens that can't be done(and anything's righterthan bookscould plan)the stupidest teacher will almost guess(with a runskiparound we go yes)there's nothing as something as oneone hasn't a why or because or although(and buds know betterthan booksdon't grow)one's anything old being everything new(with a whatwhicharound we come who)one's everyanything soso world is a leaf so tree is a bough(and birds sing sweeterthan bookstell how)so here is away and so your is a my(with a downuparound again fly)forever was never till nownow i love you and you love me(and books are shutterthan bookscan be)and deep in the high that does nothing but fall(with a shouteacharound we go all)there's somebody calling who's wewe're anything brighter than even the sun(we're everything greaterthan booksmight mean)we're everanything more than believe(with a spinleapalive we're alive)we're wonderful one times one” - E.E. Cummings

31. “When people say, "I've told you fifty times," / They mean to scold, and very often do; / When poets say, "I've written fifty rhymes," / They make you dread that they 'II recite them too;In gangs of fifty, thieves commit their crimes; / At fifty love for love is rare, 't is true, / But then, no doubt, it equally as true is, / A good deal may be bought for fifty Louis.” - Lord Byron

32. “I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind.” - Francesca Lia Block

33. “Maybe you could be mine / or maybe we’ll be entwined / aimless in this sexless foreplay.” - Jess C. Scott

34. “. . . car il n'est point vrai que l'oeuvre de l'homme est finie que nous n'avons rien à faire au monde que nous parasitons le monde qu'il suffit que nous nous mettions au pas du monde mais l'oeuvre de l'homme vient seulement de commencer et il reste à l'homme à conquérir toute interdiction immobilisée aux coins de sa ferveur et aucune race ne possède le monopole de la beauté, de l'intelligence, de la force . . .” - Aimé Césaire

35. “Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.” - Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

36. “I went down not long agoto the Mad River, under the willowsI knelt and drank from that crumpled flow, call itwhat madness you will, there's a sicknessworse than the risk of death and that'sforgetting what we should never forget.Tecumseh lived here.The wounds of the pastare ignored, but hang onlike the litter that snags among the yellow branches,newspapers and plastic bags, after the rains.Where are the Shawnee now?Do you know? Or would you have to write to Washington, and even then,whatever they said,would you believe it? SometimesI would like to paint my body red and go intothe glittering snowto die.His name meant Shooting Star.From Mad River country north to the borderhe gathered the tribesand armed them one more time. He vowedto keep Ohio and it took himover twenty years to fail.After the bloody and final fighting, at Thames,it was over, excepthis body could not be found,and you can do whatever you want with that, sayhis people came in the black leaves of the nightand hauled him to a secret grave, or thathe turned into a little boy again, and leapedinto a birch canoe and wentrowing home down the rivers. Anywaythis much I'm sure of: if we meet him, we'll know it,he will still beso angry.” - Mary Oliver

37. “Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.” - Anne Sexton

38. “He calls me desperate (on my tombstone)I hope poetic license will allow: HUNGRY” - Eli Coppola

39. “Poems are difficult to silence.” - Stephen Greenblatt

40. “Mi táctica es mirarte aprender como sos quererte como sosmi táctica es hablarte y escucharte construir con palabras un puente indestructiblemi táctica es quedarme en tu recuerdo no sé cómo ni sé con qué pretexto pero quedarme en vosmi táctica es ser franco y saber que sos franca y que no nos vendamos simulacros para que entre los dosno haya telón ni abismosmi estrategia es en cambio más profunda y más simple mi estrategia es que un día cualquiera no sé cómo ni sé con qué pretexto por fin me necesites” - Mario Benedetti Táctica y estrategia

41. “Si todos los rios son dulcesde donde saca sal el mar?If all rivers are sweetwhere does the sea get its salt?” - Pablo Neruda

42. “OvermodulationBy Charlotte M Liebel-FawlsYou're a cavity in my oasis,You're a porthole in my sea,You're a stretch of the imagination every time you look at me.You're an ocean in my wineglass,You're a Steinway on the beach,You're a captivating audience, an exciting Rembrandt,A Masterpiece.” - Charlotte M. Liebel

43. “After the final no there comes a yes / And on that yes the future world depends.” - Wallace Stevens

44. “The Windowsill Over the Sink[...] begins to crowd around you with its clutter showing you that you can keep everything but promises.” - Vern Rutsala

45. “September has come, it is hersWhose vitality leaps in the autumn,Whose nature prefersTrees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace.So I give her this month and the nextThough the whole of my year should be hers who has rendered alreadySo many of its days intolerable or perplexedBut so many more so happy.Who has left a scent on my life, and left my wallsDancing over and over with her shadowWhose hair is twined in all my waterfallsAnd all of London littered with remembered kisses.” - Louis MacNeice

46. “I have been happy, though in a dream.I have been happy-and I love the theme:Dreams! in their vivid colouring of lifeAs in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife” - Edgar Allan Poe

47. “...some say Twitter seems trite and lacks weightiness - but in actuality, it lends itself to poetry - it can be very compressed and intense...” - John Geddes

48. “You see another who looks thirsty.Walking over to them, you nudge them on the back.They look at you, and you gesture toward the lake with your head.You and the other walk over there, and you are content and you are happy.You are home.” - Amanda Leigh

49. “I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections.and it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill.I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self,and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can helpand patience, and a certain difficult repentancelong difficult repentance, realization of life’s mistake, and the freeing oneselffrom the endless repetition of the mistakewhich mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.” - D.H. Lawrence

50. “Art is long, and Time is fleeting,And our hearts, though stout and brave,Still, like muffled drums, are beatingFuneral marches to the grave.” - Longfellow

51. “a politician is an arse uponwhich everyone has sat except a man” - E.E. Cummings

52. “Get close to grass and you’ll see a star.” - Dejan Stojanovic

53. “There can be no forced inspiration.” - Dejan Stojanovic

54. “Digressions are part of harmony, deviations too.” - Dejan Stojanovic

55. “Creating means living.” - Dejan Stojanovic

56. “Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?Is it for such I agitate my heart?” - Sylvia Plath

57. “I should have told You before talking in terms of Foreverthat any given day wears me out and works me sour,that there are nights when the sky is so clear I stand obnoxious underneath it begging for the stars to shoot at me just so I can feel at Home.” - Buddy Wakefield

58. “I didn't know the demonsthat walked across your memory.They came from the dustwhen you were at peacein your grave.” - Susie Clevenger

59. “This tiger is sprawledSo still and so flat,A question arisesWhen glancing thereat.Is he asleep? to bePerfectly frank,He looks more as ifHe was creamed by a tank!” - Bill Watterson

60. “Country music is the poetry of the American spirit.” - Steve Maraboli

61. “My heart is lost; the beasts have eaten it.” - Charles Baudelaire

62. “Κι μιὰ μέρα θέλω νὰ γράψουν στὸν τάφο μου: ἔζησε στὰ σύνοραμιᾶς ἀκαθόριστης ἡλικίας καὶ πέθανε γιὰ πράγματα μακρινὰ ποὺ……εἶδε κάποτε σ᾿ ἕνα ἀβέβαιο ὄνειρο.” - Τάσος Λειβαδίτης

63. “Football is the poetry of a motion.” - Pubudu Lasal Dissanayake