Original Poetry Quotes

In poetry, I have, since very young, loved poetry in translation. The Chinese, the French, the Russians, Italians, Indians and early Celts: the formality of the translator's voice, their measured breath and anxiety moves me as it lingers over the original. ~ Fanny Howe

The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its occasional astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem. It is accused by Protestant dervishes of withholding the Bible from the people. To some extent this is true; to some extent the church is wise; again to the same extent it is prosperous.
...
Rome indeed has not only preserved the original poetry of Christianity; it has also made capital additions to that poetry -- for example, the poetry of the saints, of Mary, and of the liturgy itself. A solemn high mass is a thousand times as impressive, to a man with any genuine religious sense in him, as the most powerful sermon ever roared under the big top by Presbyterian auctioneer of God. In the face of such overwhelming beauty it is not necessary to belabor the faithful with logic; they are better convinced by letting them alone.

Preaching is not an essential part of the Latin ceremonial. It was very little employed in the early church, and I am convinced that good effects would flow from abandoning it today, or, at all events, reducing it to a few sentences, more or less formal. In the United States the Latin brethren have been seduced by the example of the Protestants, who commonly transform an act of worship into a puerile intellectual exercise; instead of approaching God in fear and wonder these Protestants settle back in their pews, cross their legs, and listen t ~ H.L. Mencken

Imagine This

Life is not a bowl of cherries
Ignore what's in the song
It's not a bowl of things at all
The song you see, is wrong
Think of it as rhubarb
And don't forget the custard
A mixture of the sharp and sweet
And a word to say when flustered. ~ Robbie Franklin

Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright,
And the stars they glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen
For what they listen? ~ John Keats

Every experience will fill with immediacy. Because I love this, I am never bored. Beauty constantly wells up like the noise of springwater in my ear. Tree limbs rise and fall like ecstatic arms. Leaf sounds talk together like poets making fresh metaphors. The green felt cover slips; we get a flash of the mirror underneath. The conventional opinion of this poetry is that it shows great optimism for the future. But Father Reason says, No need to announce the future. This now is it. Your deepest need and desire is satisfied by this moment's energy here in your hand. ~ Rumi

Our Government is fostering economic growth in Kitchener, Cambridge and all of the Waterloo Region by investing in our innovative businesses. Today's announcement is a great example of how we are helping high-potential companies bring great ideas to market faster. Helping our entrepreneurs and original thinkers export their products and services to the rest of the world creates jobs, growth and economic prosperity here at home. ~ Gary Goodyear

In pursuing certain virtues - colorful local effects, personae and personality, juxtaposition, close calls with nonsense, uncertainty, critiques of ordinary language - the current crop of American poets necessarily give up on others. ~ Stephen Burt

Sometimes my poetry is an attempt to keep off existential terror; sometimes it is a grappling with philosophical problems; sometimes just fun. ~ Gwen Harwood

Forever, if she promises to never part the ocean where the river sings. ~ Delano Johnson

I have an attraction to strange
and unusual things.
I find them interesting,
spellbinding,
utterly fascinating. ~ Melody Lee

Don't tell a girl with fire in her veins and hurricane bones what she should and shouldn't do. In the blink of an eye, she will shatter that ridiculous cage you attempt to build around her beautiful bohemian spirit. ~ Melody Lee

Desire is a powerful boat herding anchors and chains in the middle of the night. ~ Rosabetty Munoz

Somewhere between the corner of your eyes and the corner of your lips, my love for you was gone. Was I ready to tell you or was I to leave my deception by the chair for your to discover after I was gone? ~ Sreesha Divakaran

Poetry is enthusiasm with wings of fire; it is the angel of high thoughts, that inspires us with the power of sacrifice. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini

As if bad poetry could ever save anyone. ~ Sally Warner

When your skin touched my skin
And your lips touched my lips
The whole Universe paused!

And when your Soul
Collided with my Soul
That's when newer Stars
And Galaxies were formed! ~ Avijeet Das

A particular ikon an aid to devotion may be itself a word of art, but that is logically accidental; its artistic merits will not make it a better ... ikon. They may make it a worse one. ~ C.S. Lewis

Harmonious words render ordinary ideas acceptable; less ordinary, pleasant; novel and ingenious ones, delightful. As pictures and statues, and living beauty, too, show better by music-light, so is poetry irradiated, vivified, glorified', and raised into immortal life by harmony. ~ Walter Savage Landor

It is always easy to mock 'distress,' but we are its contemporaries; we are at the endpoint of what Nous, ratio, & Logos, still today the framework for what we are, cannot have failed to show: that murder is the first thing to count on, and elimination the surest means of identification. Today, everywhere, against this black but 'enlightened' background, remaining reality is disappearing in the mire of a 'globalized' world. Nothing, not even the most obvious phenomena, not even the purest, most wrenching love, can escape this era's shadow: a cancer of the subject, whether in the ego or in the masses... ~ Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe

Pirate Captain Jim
"Walk the plank," says Pirate Jim
"But Captain Jim, I cannot swim."
"Then you must steer us through the gale."
"But Captain Jim, I cannot sail."
"Then down with the galley slaves you go."
"But Captain Jim, I cannot row."
"Then you must be the pirate's clerk."
"But Captain Jim, I cannot work. ~ Shel Silverstein

'We're not ... we haven't been writing poetry and sprinkling rose petals and tripping hand in hand under rainbows, Kay.'
'Just because you have Y chromosomes doesn't mean you can't tell each other how you feel, Dylan. Your penises won't fall off if you do.' ~ Kim Fielding

To the Virgins, To Make much of Time
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he is to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while you may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry. ~ Robert Herrick

His first word, his first day at junior high. Nonsense things, the deepest, most important poetry of my life. ~ Sebastian Barry

Never did Poesy appear So full of heaven to me, as when I saw how it would pierce through pride and fear To the lives of coarsest men. ~ James Russell Lowell

Francis Underwood was entirely based on Richard III. When Michael Dobbs wrote 'House of Cards' in the original British series, Richard III is what he based the character on. ~ Kevin Spacey

I'll lie here and learn
How, over their ground,
Trees make a long shadow
And a light sound. ~ Louise Bogan

Not sleeping tonight
Thoughts incoherent in mind
A lucid dream gives solace. ~ Fuad Alakbarov

The world is better without
them.
only the plants and the animals are
true comrades.
I drink to them and with
them. ~ Charles Bukowski

So goes the hard way- the (fall a)part way-the (break a) heart way. ~ Kami Garcia

... 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

Every one has a story someone in the world needs to hear. ~ Tami Belt

Regret is mostly caused by not having
done anything. ~ Charles Bukowski

There is no gentle here. ~ Danabelle Gutierrez

Spring
The season between winter and summer, comprising in the Northern Hemisphere
the months March, April and May.

The ability of something to return to its original shape when it is pressed down, stretched or twisted. ~ Cecelia Ahern

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

I work with a lot of young people who have poems that are changing their lives, that they're eager to talk about, but every now and then when I meet someone, maybe someone of my parents' generation, and I tell them that I write poetry, they'll begin to recite something that they memorized when they were in school that has never left them. ~ Tracy K. Smith