Nothing is poetical if plain daylight is not poetical; and no monster should amaze us if the normal man does not amaze.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul – and sings the tunes without the words – and never stops at all.

The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes, and before I could read them for myself, I had come to love just the words of them, the words alone.

But time has set its maggot on their track.

Science arose from poetry… when times change the two can meet again on a higher level as friends.

In constructing the plot and working it out with the proper diction, the poet should place the scene, as far as possible, before his eyes. In this way, seeing everything with the utmost vividness, as if he were a spectator of the action, he will discover what is in keeping with it, and be most unlikely to overlook inconsistencies.

I like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more.

Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

I want the concentration and the romance, and the worlds all glued together, fused, glowing: have no time to waste any more on prose.

There is no Frigate like a book to take us lands away nor any coursers like a page of prancing Poetry.

Do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Of Manners gentle, of Affections mild; In Wit a man; Simplicity, a child.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

A poet can survive everything but a misprint.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

I felt like my favorite writers have almost musical hooks in their work, whether it’s poetry or a hook at the end of a chapter that makes you want to read the next one. And I think that my favorite writers definitely have something musical about what they do, in saying something so relatable and universal and so simple.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

I’m doing everything that I can, working with experts, really studying the statistics to figure out a way we can make it cool or normal to be kind and loving.

And if a person is religious, I think it’s good, it helps you a bit. But if you’re not, at least you can have the sense that there is a condition inside you which looks at the stars with amazement and awe.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Disagreement is something normal.

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

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

At my advanced age – I’m now an octogenarian – I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture.

It’s not easy to define poetry.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.

Where every something, being blent together turns to a wild of nothing.

I think a poet is anybody who wouldn’t call himself a poet.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

I don’t think of poetry as a ‚rational‘ activity but as an aural one. My poems usually begin with words or phrases which appeal more because of their sound than their meaning, and the movement and phrasing of a poem are very important to me.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

I write some country music. There’s a song called ‚I Hope You Dance.‘ Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.

A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.

On the subject of literary genres, I’ve always felt that my response to poetry is inadequate. I’d love to be the kind of person that drifts off into the garden with a slim volume of Elizabethan verse or a sheaf of haikus, but my passion is story.

Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of nature.

Human beings love poetry. They don’t even know it sometimes… whether they’re the songs of Bono, or the songs of Justin Bieber… they’re listening to poetry.

I am in the world feeling my way to light ‚amid the encircling gloom.‘

I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.