Quotations About Spring

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.
~ Proverb from Guinea


The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another.
The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.
~ Henry Van Dyke


I think that no matter how old or infirm I may become,
I will always plant a large garden in the spring. Who can
resist the feelings of hope and joy that one gets from
participating in nature's rebirth?
- Edward Giobbi


To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the
stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring — these
are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~ John Burroughs


Spring is when you feel like whistling even with a shoe full of slush.
~ Doug Larson


I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose
I would always greet it in a garden.
~ Ruth Stout


If Spring came but once in a century, instead of once a year, or burst forth with the sound of an earthquake, and not in silence, what wonder and expectation there would be in all hearts to behold the miraculous change! But now the silent succession suggests nothing but necessity. To most men only the cessation of the miracle would be miraculous and the perpetual exercise of God's power seems less wonderful than its withdrawal would be. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
~The Gospel According To Zen


In the scenery of spring,
nothing is better, nothing worse;
The flowering branches are
of themselves, some short, some long.
~ Ryokan


Happiness? The color of it must be spring green, impossible to describe until I see a just-hatched lizard sunning on a stone. That color, the
glowing green lizard skin, repeats in every new leaf. ... The
regenerative power of nature explodes in every weed, stalk, branch.
Working in the mild sun, I feel the green fuse of my body, too. Surges
of energy, kaleidoscopic sunlight through the leaves, the soft breeze
that makes me want to say the word "zephyr" - this mindless
simplicity can be called happiness.
~ Frances, Mayes


Only in dreams of spring
Shall I ever see again
The flowering of my cherry trees.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett


The country habit has me by the heart,
For he's bewitched forever who has seen,
Not with his eyes but with his vision, Spring
Flow down the woods and stipple leaves with sun.
~ Vita Sackville-West


Autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
~ Elizabeth Bowen


Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men. ~ Chinese Proverb


Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses,
a box where sweets compacted lie. ~ George Herbert
Springtime is the land awakening. The March winds are the morning yawn. ~ Lewis Grizzard


April prepares her green traffic light and the world thinks Go. ~Christopher Morley


It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~Charles Dickens


Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors, there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night. ~Rainer Maria Rilke


In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt. ~Margaret Atwood


The naked earth is warm with Spring,
And with green grass and bursting trees
Leans to the sun's kiss glorying,
And quivers in the sunny breeze.
~Julian Grenfell


The first day of spring was once the time for taking the young virgins into the fields, there in dalliance to set an example in fertility for nature to follow. Now we just set the clocks an hour ahead and change the oil in the crankcase. ~E.B. White

Quotations About Winter

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle ... a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream. ~ Barbara Winkler

If there were no tribulation, there would be no rest; if there were no winter, there would be no summer. ~ St. John Chrysostom

Through winter-time we call on spring, And through the spring on summer call, And when the abounding hedges ring Declare that winter's best of all: And after that there's nothing good Because the spring time has not come-- Not know that what disturbs our blood Is but its longing for the tomb. ~ W. B. Yeats

For the ignorant, old age is as winter; for the learned, it is a harvest. ~ Jewish Proverb

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair- The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing - And Winter slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring! And I the while, the sole unbusy thing, Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge


The world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn. ~ John DaviesThe world's great age begins anew, The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew Her winter weeds outworn. - John Davies

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. ~Andrew Wyeth


Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours." ~Robert Byrne


There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout


One of my current pet theories is that the winter is a kind of evangelist, more subtle than Billy Graham, of course, but of the same stuff. ~Shirley Ann Grau


Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius. ~Pietro Aretino


The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood. ~John Burroughs


Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. ~Stanley Crawford


Every mile is two in winter. ~George Herbert



I was just thinking, if it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime. ~Will Rogers


Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.
~Charles Kingsley


To shorten winter, borrow some money due in spring. ~W.J. Vogel


O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?
~Percy Bysshe Shelley


Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition. ~Mignon McLaughlin


One kind word can warm three winter months. ~Japanese Proverb

Quotations About Weather II

A snowflake is one of God's most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together!

One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible. ~ Albert Einstein


Summer is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ~ John Ruskin


What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. ~ Jane Austen

Referring to the bad sun conditions in left field at the stadium: It gets late out there early. ~ Yogi Berra


A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes. ~ Joseph Addison


Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. ~ Mark Twain


Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. ~John Ruskin


A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water. ~Carl Reiner


Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby. ~Langston Hughes


Rainbows apologize for angry skies. ~Sylvia Voirol


The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. ~Patrick Young


To be interested in the changing seasons is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. ~George Santayana


The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day with dark rain sniveling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky. ~Muriel Spark


Weather forecast for tonight: dark. ~George Carlin


Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. ~Kin Hubbard


There is no season such delight can bring
As summer, autumn, winter and the spring.
~William Browne


I played as much golf as I could in North Dakota, but summer up there is pretty short. It usually falls on Tuesday. ~Mike Morley


Anyone who says sunshine brings happiness has never danced in the rain. ~Author Unknown


Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet. ~Roger Miller


No one but Night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay

Quotations About Weather I

Snowflakes are kisses from heaven.

Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may will call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains. ~Henry Ward Beecher


Many a man curses the rain that falls upon his head, and knows not that it brings abundance to drive away the hunger. ~Saint Basil


A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods. ~Rachel Carson


There's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down. ~Don Delillo


Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain,
Unravelled from the tumbling main...
~Thomas Lovell Beddoes


The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. ~Mark Twain


There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. ~Annie Dillard


For the man sound in body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every day has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more vigorously. ~George Gissing


The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind the anonymous medieval poet makes me remember, the rain that falls on a day when you'd just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam and look out the streaked window with complacency. ~Susan Allen Toth


The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. ~e.e. cummings


What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance. ~Jane Austen


Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply....
~Edna St Vincent Millay


Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine. ~Anthony J. D'Angelo


The sun lay like a friendly arm across her shoulder. ~Margorie Kinnan Rawlings


Bad weather always looks worse through a window. ~Author Unknown


There's one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor's. ~Clyde Moore


There is little chance that meteorologists can solve the mysteries of weather until they gain an understanding of the mutual attraction of rain and weekends. ~Arnot Sheppard


I am sure it is a great mistake always to know enough to go in when it rains. One may keep snug and dry by such knowledge, but one misses a world of loveliness. ~Adeline Knapp

Quotations About Moon

The moon looks upon many night flowers; the night flowers see but one moon. ~ Jean Ingelow


Such a slender moon, going up and up, Waxing so fast from night to night, And swelling like an orange flower-bud, bright, Fated, methought, to round as to a golden cup, And hold to my two lips life's best of wine. ~ Jean Ingelow


While the flowers, pale and unreal in the moonlight, floated away upon the river; and thus do greater things that once were in our breasts, and near our hearts, flow from us to the eternal seas. ~ Charles Dickens


The moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the moon that pulls the tides, and the moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist. When we describe the moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness. ~ D. H. Lawrence


Moon! Moon! am prone before you. Pity me, and drench me in loneliness. ~ Amy Lowell


There is a chill in the air after dark, and we had all drawn close to the blaze. The night was moonless, but there were some stars, and one could see for a little distance across the plain. Well, suddenly out of the darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like an aeroplane. The whole group of us were covered for an instant by a canopy of leathery wings, and I had a momentary vision of a long, snake-like neck, a fierce, red, greedy eye, and a great snapping beak, filled, to my amazement, with little, gleaming teeth. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle



Mother of light! how fairly dost thou go Over those hoary crests, divinely led! Art thou that huntress of the silver bow Fabled of old? Or rather dost thou tread Those cloudy summits thence to gaze below, Like the wild chamois from her Alpine snow, Where hunters never climbed--secure from dread? ~ Thomas Hood


The moon, the moon, so silver and cold, Her fickle temper has oft been told, Now shade--now bright and sunny-- But of all the lunar things that change, The one that shows most fickle and strange, And takes the most eccentric range, Is the moon--so called--of honey! ~ Thomas Hood



What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


All is going on as it was wont. The waves are hoarse with repetition of their mystery; the dust lies piled upon the shore; the sea-birds soar and hover; the winds and clouds go forth upon their trackless flight; the white arms beckon, in the moonlight, to the invisible country far away. ~ Charles Dickens


This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation, because as a result of what happened in this week, the world is bigger, infinitely. ~ Richard M. Nixon



There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
~ Joseph Conrad


As the moon's fair image quaketh In the raging waves of ocean, Whilst she, in the vault of heaven, Moves with silent peaceful motion. ~ Heinrich Heine



I don't remember forms or faces now, but I know the girl was beautiful. I know she was; for in the bright moonlight nights, when I start from my sleep, and all is quiet about me, I see, standing still and motionless in one corner of this cell, a slight and wasted figure with long black hair, which streaming down her back, stirs with no earthly wind, and eyes that fix their gaze on me, and never wink or close. . . ~ Charles Dickens



Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from terra... these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known... this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me. ~ Vladimir Nabokov


On the road, the lonely road, Under the cold, white moon; Under the rugged trees he strode, Whistled and shifted his heavy load-- Whistled a foolish tune. ~ William Wallace Harney


So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky. ~ Russell Wayne Baker



The moving moon went up to the sky, And nowhere did abide; Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge


The moon is nothing but a circumambulating aphrodisiac divinely subsidized to provoke the world into a rising birth-rate. ~ Christopher Fry


Lend me thy pen To write a word In the moonlight. Pierrot, my friend! My candle's out, I've no more fire;-- For love of God Open thy door! ~ Folk Song


The moon is at her full, and riding high, Floods the calm fields with light. The airs that hover in the summer sky Are all asleep to-night. ~ William Cullen Bryant


Doth the moon care for the barking of a dog? ~ Robert Burton



The sun had sunk and the summer skies Were dotted with specks of light That melted soon in the deep moon-rise That flowed over Groton Height. ~ M'Donald Clarke



The moon pull'd off her veil of light, That hides her face by day from sight (Mysterious veil, of brightness made,) That's both her lustre and her shade), And in the lantern of the night, With shining horns hung out her light. ~ Samuel Butler

Quotations About Sun

The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire. ~ Charles Dickens

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~~ Charles Dickens

He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. ~ Emily Bronte

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou her maid art far more fair than she. ~ William Shakespeare

Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun. ~ William Shakespeare

Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. ~ Herman Melville

The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! ~ Herman Melville

There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Slowly the sun sank, then suddenly darkness rushed down on the land like a tangible thing. There was no breathing-space between the day and night, no soft transformation scene, for in these latitudes twilight does not exist. The change from day to night is as quick and as absolute as the change from life to death. ~ H. Rider Haggard

A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything. ~ Charles Dickens

So, she leaning on her husband's arm, they turned homeward by a rosy path which the gracious sun struck out for them in its setting. And O there are days in this life, worth life and worth death. And O what a bright old song it is, that O 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love that makes the world go round! ~ Charles Dickens

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning him-self to let it eat him away. ~ Charles Dickens

Without, the sun shines bright and the birds are singing amid the ivy on the drooping beeches. Their choice is made, and they turn away hand-in-hand, with their backs to the darkness and their faces to the light. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful. ~ Charles Dickens

He has been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put in phials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw inclement summers. ~ Jonathan Swift

Dreams are the bright creatures of poem and legend, who sport on earth in the night season, and melt away in the first beam of the sun, which lights grim care and stern reality on their daily pilgrimage through the world. ~ Charles Dickens

It was an ideal spring day, a light blue sky, flecked with little fleecy white clouds drifting across from west to east. The sun was shining very brightly, and yet there was an exhilarating nip in the air, which set an edge to a man's energy. ~ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The wide stare stared itself out for one while; the Sun went down in a red, green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the goodness of a better order of beings; the long dusty roads and the interminable plains were in repose--and so deep a hush was on the sea, that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead. ~ Charles Dickens

A brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beautiful, with a lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields - or, rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island in its yielding time - penetrate into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life. The cold stone tombs of centuries ago grow warm; and flecks of brightness dart into the sternest marble corners of the building, fluttering there like wings. ~ Charles Dickens

Love comforteth like sunshine after rain. ~ William Shakespeare

And God made two great lights, great for their use
To Man, the greater to have rule by day,
The less by night . . . ~ John Milton

The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield under the sun. It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines through a pale haze of spring. ~ Edith Wharton

Quotations About Stars

All the stars in the sky cannot compare to the beauty of your smile.

You took my hand and lead me to a stair case to the stars.

If a star fell from the sky everytime that I thought of you there would be none.

I hate the stars because I look at the same ones as you do, without you.

Even the number of stars in the sky could never outdo the amount of love that my heart holds for you.

I need you like I need the sun, the moon, and the stars!

Of all the shooting stars I knew, I never fell for anyone but you.

Starlight, star bright, first star I see tonight. When I look into your eyes, it can't be wrong if it feels this right. If I could only make you mine, make me leave my past behind. If only wishes could come true, I'd have you." "One Year Later"

Stars are out tonight and you're the brightest one shining in my sky. It's like every wish I ever made came true, the day I woke up lying next to you.

Starlight, star bright he was my first kiss tonight; Wish I am, wish I might have this guy for the rest of my life.

I must be wishing on the wrong star, because someone else is always getting what I want.

Among the stars and past the moon, I search forevermore, for you. I've never found you, as I watch the sunset, I think, where have you gone, and where are you now? Forevermore...I wonder.

He must has stolen some stars from the sky and gave them to you to wear in your eyes.

Kiss me and you will see stars. Love me and I'll give them to you.

Star Light, Star Bright, shooting star up in the sky, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this guy my heart can't fight.

The heavens above and the stars in the sky, are my word to you I’ll never break your heart.

There is a star in your eye that only I can see. There is a place in your heart where only I want to be.

Who needs to wish on a star to have luck... I have you!

There are as many possibilities in life as there are stars in the sky!

The star that makes love's dream come true was shining on me when I met you.

Twinkling stars, too many to count, like angels in heaven.

You're my shooting star because everything I've ever wished for is everything you are.

The stars are constantly shining, but often we do not see them until the darkest hours.

You can feel the stars and the infinity of the sky since life, in spite of everything, is like a dream.

It rains because the heavens miss the star that has fallen to earth. That star is you.

As I looked upon the starry sky, I searched for a star that would match your beauty, but of all the stars, I could not find one.

If I gave you all the stars from the sky that I've wished for you on, then I'd bet you'd get every star in the sky.

The sparkle in your eyes could make the stars jealous.

The stars shine brightest only in your eyes.

We were written in the stars, my love, all that separated us, was time, the time it took to read the map which was placed within our hearts, to find our way back to one another.

Were your parents theives? Because they stole the stars and put them in your eyes.

It must have been a rainy day when you where born, except it wasn't really raining. It was the sky who was crying because it lost his most beautiful star, YOU!

I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of stars makes me dream.

I won't forget the day we met or the day we kissed. The sky may fall and the stars may too, but in the end, I will still love you ...

When you miss me just look up to the night sky and remember, I'm like a star; sometimes you can't see me, but I'm always there.

Your eyes are the stars in my heaven. Your lips are the waves of my ocean. But your HEART is the passage of both of our emotions, dreams and journeys.

Wanting to be with you is like trying to touch a star. You know you'll never accomplish it, but you just keep on trying.

When life is too crazy, and things are moving too fast, look to the constant stars... and remember, like them, our love can last.

In a lover's sky, all stars are eclipsed by the eyes of the one you love...

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.

I started wishing upon a star then I found you and wished no more.

Up in the skies, I look very carefully to see your face. I wonder if you're there, I wonder if tonight you're thinking of me. I just want to tell you that looking at the stars makes me think of you. By looking at it I just want to be where you are, and hold you tight and never let go!!

What would it be like to swing on a star, or walk on a cloud? Would it be anything like what I feel whenever you are near?

Quotations About Poetry II

Poetry is man's rebellion against being what he is. ~James Branch Cabell


It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things. ~Stephen Mallarme


Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason. ~Novalis


There is poetry as soon as we realize that we possess nothing. ~John Cage


Breathe-in experience,
breathe-out poetry.
~Muriel Rukeyser


I grew up in this town, my poetry was born between the hill and the river, it took its voice from the rain, and like the timber, it steeped itself in the forests. ~Pablo Neruda



What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed? ~W.H. Auden


Poetry is the language in which man explores his own amazement. ~Christopher Fry


Mathematics and Poetry are... the utterance of the same power of imagination, only that in the one case it is addressed to the head, in the other, to the heart. ~Thomas Hill


The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy. The writer of prose can only step aside when the poet passes. ~W. Somerset Maugham



Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did. ~Christopher Morley


Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. ~Gustave Flaubert




Even when poetry has a meaning, as it usually has, it may be inadvisable to draw it out.... Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. ~A.E. Housman



Poetry is plucking at the heartstrings, and making music with them. ~Dennis Gabor


Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words. ~Edgar Allan Poe


Poetry is the revelation of a feeling that the poet believes to be interior and personal which the reader recognizes as his own. ~Salvatore Quasimodo


Browsing the dim back corner
Of a musty antique shop
Opened an old book of poetry
Angels flew out from the pages
I caught the whiff of a soul
The ink seemed fresh as today
Was that voices whispering?
The tree of the paper still grows.
~Pixie Foudre


You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you. ~Joseph Joubert


Science is for those who learn; poetry, for those who know. ~Joseph Roux


Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. ~Carl Sandburg


Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. ~Carl Sandburg


Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth. ~Samuel Johnson


I've written some poetry I don't understand myself. ~Carl Sandburg


The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats


Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful. ~Rita Dove

Quotations About Poetry I

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.



Poetry is life distilled. ~Gwendolyn Brooks


Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~Thomas Gray


He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise. ~Oscar Wilde


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


Poetry is all that is worth remembering in life. ~William Hazlitt


Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood. ~T.S. Eliot



Poetry is the art of substantiating shadows. ~Edmund Burke


Poetry, like the moon, does not advertise anything. ~William Blissett



Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a shade tree. He doesn't eat much and doesn't read much, but listens well and is a most gracious host. ~Astrid Alauda




Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things. ~T.S. Eliot


Poetry is ordinary language raised to the nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words. ~Paul Engle


I don't create poetry, I create myself, for me my poems are a way to me. ~Edith Södergran



Poetry is not a civilizer, rather the reverse, for great poetry appeals to the most primitive instincts. ~Robinson Jeffers




Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash. ~Leonard Cohen


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


Ink runs from the corners of my mouth
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
~Mark Strand


Poetry is a packsack of invisible keepsakes. ~Carl Sandburg


Poetry should... should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. ~John Keats


To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie -
True Poems flee.
~Emily Dickinson


There's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money, either. ~Robert Graves


Poetry is what gets lost in translation. ~Robert Frost

Poetry is the journal of the sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air. Poetry is a search for syllables to shoot at the barriers of the unknown and the unknowable. Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away. ~Carl Sandburg


Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. ~Percy Shelley


Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry. ~W.B. Yeats

Quotations About Poems

A poem is true if it hangs together. Information points to something else. A poem points to nothing but itself. ~E.M. Forster


Imaginary gardens with real toads in them. ~Marianne Moore


A poem is never finished, only abandoned. ~Paul Valéry


Like a piece of ice on a hot stove the poem must ride on its own melting. ~Robert Frost


You can tear a poem apart to see what makes it tick.... You're back with the mystery of having been moved by words. The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps... so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash or thunder in. ~Dylan Thomas


If you've got a poem within you today, I can guarantee you a tomorrow. ~Terri Guillemets


I would as soon write free verse as play tennis with the net down. ~Robert Frost


The poem is the point at which our strength gave out. ~Richard Rosen


The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse... the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of thing that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars. ~Aristotle


He who writes prose builds his temple to Fame in rubble; he who writes verses builds it in granite. ~Edward Bulwer-Lytton


The word "Verse" is used here as the term most convenient for expressing, and without pedantry, all that is involved in the consideration of rhythm, rhyme, meter, and versification... the subject is exceedingly simple; one tenth of it, possibly may be called ethical; nine tenths, however, appertains to the mathematics. ~Edgar Allan Poe



The poem...is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see - it is, rather, a light by which we may see - and what we see is life. ~Robert Penn Warren



If the author had said "Let us put on appropriate galoshes," there could, of course, have been no poem. ~Author Unknown


A poem begins with a lump in the throat. ~Robert Frost



If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone. ~Thomas Hardy



A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom. ~Robert Frost


Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. ~Don Marquis


No poems can please for long or live that are written by water-drinkers. ~Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

Quotations About Poet

Only the poet has any right to be sorry for the poor, if he has anything to spare when he has thought of the dull, commonplace rich. ~William Bolitho

The worst fate of a poet is to be admired without being understood. ~Jean Cocteau

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind. ~Thomas Babington Macaulay

You don't have to suffer to be a poet. Adolescence is enough suffering for anyone. ~John Ciardi

To have great poets there must be great audiences too. ~Walt Whitman

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau

A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote. ~Yevgeny Yentushenko

God is the perfect poet. ~Robert Browning

Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things. ~Robert Frost

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ~Percy Byshe Shelley

A prose writer gets tired of writing prose, and wants to be a poet. So he begins every line with a capital letter, and keeps on writing prose. ~Samuel McChord Crothers

A poet is an unhappy being whose heart is torn by secret sufferings, but whose lips are so strangely formed that when the sighs and the cries escape them, they sound like beautiful music... and then people crowd about the poet and say to him: "Sing for us soon again;" that is as much as to say, "May new sufferings torment your soul." ~Soren Kierkegaard

The true poet is all the time a visionary and whether with friends or not, as much alone as a man on his death bed. ~W.B. Yeats

"Therefore" is a word the poet must not know. ~André Gide

Each man carries within him the soul of a poet who died young. ~Sainte-Beuve

A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman. ~Wallace Stevens

Each memorable verse of a true poet has two or three times the written content. ~Alfred de Musset

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life. ~George Sand, 1851

Always be a poet, even in prose. ~Charles Baudelaire

The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, "Oh, just let me enjoy the poem." ~Robert Penn Warren

Poets aren't very useful
Because they aren't consumeful or very produceful.
~Ogden Nash

Poets are soldiers that liberate words from the steadfast possession of definition. ~Eli Khamarov

Poets are mysterious, but a poet when all is said is not much more mysterious than a banker. ~Allen Tate


Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie. ~Jean Cocteau


A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses. ~Jean Cocteau


Everything in creation has its appointed painter or poet and remains in bondage like the princess in the fairy tale 'til its appropriate liberator comes to set it free. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A poet must leave traces of his passage, not proof. ~Rene Char


The poet, as everyone knows, must strike his individual note sometime between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five. He may hold it a long time, or a short time, but it is then that he must strike it or never. School and college have been conducted with the almost express purpose of keeping him busy with something else till the danger of his ever creating anything is past. ~Robert Frost

Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind, because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science. ~Sigmund Freud


To be a poet is a condition, not a profession. ~Robert Frost

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth. ~Jean Cocteau


The poet dares be just so clear and no clearer.... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring. ~E.B. White


The poet... may be used as a barometer, but let us not forget that he is also part of the weather. ~Lionel Trilling

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese. ~G.K. Chesterton

A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep. ~Salman Rushdie

It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it. ~W.H. Auden

A poet can survive everything but a misprint. ~Oscar Wilde