c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
And the Spring arose on the garden fair,Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breastRose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Complete Poems
If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words.
— Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life/Social Studies
I thought my fireplace dead and stirred the ashes. I burned my fingers.
— Antonio Machado, Border of a Dream: Selected Poems
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
so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos...So ring the bells that still can ringForget your perfect offeringThere is a crack in everythingThat’s how the light gets in.
— Leonard Cohen
Who could have foretoldthe heart grows oldfrom touching others
— Leonard Cohen, The Energy of Slaves
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue/ Who says my hand a needle better fits./ A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong/ For such despite they cast on female wits;/ If what I do prove well, it won't advance,/ They'll say it's stolen, or else, it was by chance.
— Anne Bradstreet
And marbled clouds go scudding byThe many-steepled London sky.
— John Betjeman, Selected Poems
Self love is an oceanand your heart is a vessel. Make it full,and any excess will spill overinto the lives of the peopleyou hold dear. But you must come first.
— Beau Taplin
Fare well we call to hearth and hallThough wind may blow and rain may fallWe must away ere break of dayOver the wood and mountain tallTo Rivendell where Elves yet dwellIn glades beneath the misty fellThrough moor and waste we ride in hasteAnd wither then we cannot tellWith foes ahead behind us dreadBeneath the sky shall be our bedUntil at last our toil be spedOur journey done, our errand spedWe must away! We must away!We ride before the break of day!
— J.R.R. Tolkien
Nothing is more natural than mutual misunderstanding; the contrary is always surprising. I believe that one never agrees on anything except by mistake, and that all harmony among human beings is the happy fruit of an error.
— Paul Valéry, The Art of Poetry
I am sore wounded but not slainI will lay me down and bleed a whileAnd then rise up to fight again
— John Dryden
Even this late it happens:the coming of love, the coming of light.
— Mark Strand, Selected Poems
Everything comes down so pasteurizedeverything comes down 16 degreesthey say your amplifier is too loudturn your amplifier downare we high all alone on our kneesmemory is just hips that swinglike a clockthe past projects fantastic scenestic/toc tic/toc tic/tocfuck the clock!
— Patti Smith, Babel
You will come away bruised.You will come away bruisedbut this will give you poetry.
— Yrsa Daley-Ward
Fireflies in the GardenBy Robert Frost 1874–1963 Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.
— Robert Frost, The Poetry of Robert Frost
He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.
— George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.
— Umberto Eco, Postscript to the Name of the Rose
And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with youall through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed,Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?-And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Mine the Harvest
It was not death, for I stood up,And all the dead lie down;It was not night, for all the bellsPut out their tongues, for noon.It was not frost, for on my fleshI felt siroccos crawl,Nor fire, for just my marble feetCould keep a chancel cool.And yet it tasted like them all;The figures I have seenSet orderly, for burial,Reminded me of mine,As if my life were shavenAnd fitted to a frame,And could not breathe without a key;And I was like midnight, some,When everything that ticked has stopped,And space stares, all around,Or grisly frosts, first autumn morns,Repeal the beating ground.But most like chaos,--stopless, cool,Without a chance or spar,--Or even a report of landTo justify despair.
— Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
I lock my door upon myself, And bar them out; but who shall wall Self from myself, most loathed of all?
— Christina Rossetti, Complete Poems
Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret.
Ali ipak uz mene se može, mada je neobično, Sa mnom je opasno hteti, ja nikad ne odustajem.
— Miroslav Antić
Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas! / You really are beautiful! Pearls, / harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins!
— Frank O'Hara
সারাটি রাত্রি তারাটির সাথে তারাটিরই হয় কথা,আমাদের মুখ সারাটি রাত্রি মাটির বুকের 'পরে!
— Jibanananda Das, জীবনানন্দ দাশের শ্রেষ্ঠ কবিতা
a bruise, bluein the muscle, youimpinge upon me.As bone hugs the ache home, soI'm vexed to love you, your bodythe shape of returns, your hair a torsoof light, your heatI must have, your openingI'd eat, each momentof that soft-finned fruit,inverted fountain in which I don't see me.
— Li-Young Lee, The City in Which I Love You
Isn’t it time that these most ancient sorrows of ours grew fruitful? Time that we tenderly loosed ourselves from the loved one, and, unsteadily, survived: the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies
ConnubialBecause with alarming accuracy she’d been identifying patterns I was unaware of—this tic, that tendency, like the way I've mastered the language of intimacy in order to conceal how I felt— I knew I was in danger of being terribly understood.
— Stephen Dunn
It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me.I was a child and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea;But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee;With a love that the winged seraphs of heavenCoveted her and me.And this was the reason that, long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud, chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsman cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulchreIn this kingdom by the sea.The angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me-Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.For the moon never beams without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,In the sepulchre there by the sea,In her tomb by the sounding sea." "It was many and many a year ago,In a kingdom by the sea,That a maiden there lived whom you may knowBy the name of ANNABEL LEE;And this maiden she lived with no other thoughtThan to love and be loved by me.I was a child and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea;But we loved with a love that was more than love-I and my Annabel Lee;With a love that the winged seraphs of heavenCoveted her and me.And this was the reason that, long ago,In this kingdom by the sea,A wind blew out of a cloud, chillingMy beautiful Annabel Lee;So that her highborn kinsman cameAnd bore her away from me,To shut her up in a sepulchreIn this kingdom by the sea.The angels, not half so happy in heaven,Went envying her and me-Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,In this kingdom by the sea)That the wind came out of the cloud by night,Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.But our love it was stronger by far than the loveOf those who were older than we-Of many far wiser than we-And neither the angels in heaven above,Nor the demons down under the sea,Can ever dissever my soul from the soulOf the beautiful Annabel Lee.For the moon never beams without bringing me dreamsOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyesOf the beautiful Annabel Lee;And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the sideOf my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,In the sepulchre there by the sea,In her tomb by the sounding sea.
— Edgar Allan Poe
Every word was once a poem.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
But far more numerous was the herd of such,Who think too little, and who talk too much.
— John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel
while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
— Vladimir Nabokov
When you cried, I learned what helplessness tastes like. Because all I could do was swallow.
— Penny Reid, Beauty and the Mustache
A lover goes toward his beloved as enthusiastically as a schoolboy leaving his books, but when he leaves his girlfriend, he feels as miserable as the schoolboy on his way to school. (Act 2, scene 2)
— William Shakespeare
I am a work in progress.
— Violet Yates, Lost & Found
All shadows of clouds the sun cannot hide like the moon cannot stop oceanic tide;but a hidden star can still be smiling at night's black spell on darkness, beguiling
— Munia Khan
sometimes when everything seems atits worstwhen all conspiresand gnawsand the hours, days, weeksyearsseem wasted – stretched there upon my bedin the darklooking upward at the ceilingi get what many will consider anobnoxious thought:it’s still nice to beBukowski.
— Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense
We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
— Gwendolyn Brooks, Selected Poems
When no one is looking,I swallow deserts and cloudsand chew on mountainsknowing they are sweet bones!When no one is lookingand I want to kiss God,I just lift my own hand to my mouth.
— The Rubaiyat of Hafiz
If we surrenderedto earth’s intelligencewe could rise up rooted, like trees.Instead we entangle ourselvesin knots of our own makingand struggle, lonely and confused.So like children, we begin again...to fall,patiently to trust our heaviness.Even a bird has to do thatbefore he can fly.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
You know, there are good reasons to learn how to read. Poetry isn't one of them. I mean, so what if two roads go two ways in a wood? So what? Who cares if it made all that big a difference? What difference? And why should I have to guess what the difference is? Isn't that what he's supposed to say?Why can't poets just say what they want to say and then shut up?
— Gary D. Schmidt, Okay for Now
Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls, must dive below.
— John Dryden, All for Love
This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.I don't plan it.When I'm outside the saying of it,I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi
February. Get ink, shed tears.Write of it, sob your heart out, sing,While torrential slush that roarsBurns in the blackness of the spring.Go hire a buggy. For six grivnas,Race through the noice of bells and wheelsTo where the ink and all you grievingAre muffled when the rainshower falls.To where, like pears burnt black as charcoal,A myriad rooks, plucked from the trees,Fall down into the puddles, hurlDry sadness deep into the eyes.Below, the wet black earth shows through,With sudden cries the wind is pitted,The more haphazard, the more trueThe poetry that sobs its heart out. 
— Boris Pasternak
Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
— Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
Doubt not, O poet, but persist. Say 'It is in me, and shall out.' Stand there, balked and dumb, stuttering and stammering, hissed and hooted, stand and strive, until at last rage draw out of thee that dream-power which every night shows thee is thine own; a power transcending all limit and privacy, and by virtue of which a man is the conductor of the whole river of electricity.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
First, I thought, almost despairing,This must crush my spirit now;Yet I bore it, and am bearing-Only do not ask me how.
— Heinrich Heine
so much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.
— William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
I think we are in rats’ alley
—  Where the dead men lost their bones.
Sweetest smile is made saddest tear-drop!
— Edwin Arnold
Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.
— Suheir Hammad, Zaatardiva
I wander through each chartered street,Near where the chartered Thames does flow;A mark in every face I meet,Marks of weakness, marks of woe.In every cry of every man,In every infant’s cry of fear,In every voice, in every ban,The mind-forged manacles I hear:How the chimney-sweeper’s cryEvery blackening church appals,And the hapless soldier’s sighRuns in blood down palace-walls.But most, through midnight streets I hearHow the youthful harlot’s curseBlasts the new-born infant’s tear,And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.
— William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Reminiscing in the drizzle of Portland, I notice the ring that’s landed on your finger, a massiveinsect of glitter, a chandelier shining at the endof a long tunnel. Thirteen years ago, you hid the hurtin your voice under a blanket and said there’s two kindsof women—those you write poems aboutand those you don’t. It’s true. I never brought youa bouquet of sonnets, or served you haiku in bed.My idea of courtship was tapping Jane’s Addictionlyrics in Morse code on your window at three A.M., whiskey doing push-ups on my breath. But I workedwithin the confines of my character, castas the bad boy in your life, the Magellanof your dark side. We don’t have a past so muchas a bunch of electricity and liquor, powernever put to good use. What we had togethermakes it sound like a virus, as if we caughtone another like colds, and desire was merelya symptom that could be treated with soupand lots of sex. Gliding beside you now, I feel like the Benjamin Franklin of monogamy, as if I invented it, but I’m still not immuneto your waterfall scent, still haven’t developedantibodies for your smile. I don’t know how longregret existed before humans stuck a word on it.I don’t know how many paper towels it would taketo wipe up the Pacific Ocean, or why the lightof a candle being blown out travels fasterthan the luminescence of one that’s just been lit, but I do know that all our huffing and puffinginto each other’s ears—as if the brain was a trickbirthday candle—didn’t make the silenceany easier to navigate. I’m sorry all the kissesI scrawled on your neck were writtenin disappearing ink. Sometimes I thought of youso hard one of your legs would pop outof my ear hole, and when I was sleeping, you’d pressyour face against the porthole of my submarine.I’m sorry this poem has taken thirteen yearsto reach you. I wish that just once, instead of skiddingoff the shoulder blade’s precipice and joyridingover flesh, we’d put our hands away like chocolateto be saved for later, and deciphered the calligraphyof each other’s eyelashes, translated a paragraphfrom the volumes of what couldn’t be said.
— Jeffrey McDaniel
The first rose on my rose-tree  Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me  Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean;  Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been  Very pretty.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems
It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.
— Kay Ryan
I am suggesting that the radical of poetry lies not in theresolution of doubts but in their proliferation
— C.D. Wright, Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil
What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew
— Robert Browning, Jocoseria
Cut my life into pizzas. this is my plastic fork. oven baking, no breathing, dont give a fuck if its carbs that i'm eating' -Catherine Spann
— Catherine Spann
I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.
— Pablo Neruda, Memoirs
i want to be in love with youthe same wayi am in love with the moonwith the lightshiningout of its soul.
— Sanober  Khan
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.
— Plato
Staring GirlI once knew a girlwho would just stand there and stare.At anyone or anything,she seemed not to careShe'd stare at the ground,She'd stare at the sky.She'd stare at you for hours,and you'd never know why.But after winning the local staring contest,she finally gave her eyesa well-deserved rest.
— Tim Burton
sometimes i don't know, which momentwhich cool gust of wind will come,and enchant metousling my hairand my heart, stirring...that familiar ache of poetry, which drop will kissthe old wrench in my soulreminding me, all over againi miss you better in the rain.
— Sanober  Khan, A Thousand Flamingos
What wretched poverty of language! To compare stars to diamonds!
— Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
I regret to say I'munable to reply to your unexpressed desires.
— Harryette Mullen
How does the ordinary person come to the transcendent? For a start, I would say, study poetry. Learn how to read a poem. You need not have the experience to get the message, or at least some indication of the message. It may come gradually. (92)
— Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor
How to Write a PoemCatch the airaround the butterfly.
— Katerina Stoykova Klemer, The air around the butterfly/Въздухът около пеперудата
One fine day, in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced each other. They pulled out their swords and shot one another. One deaf cop, on the beat heard the noise, and came and shot the two dead boys.
— Holly Black, Valiant
The rain set early in tonight,The sullen wind was soon awake,It tore the elm-tops down for spite,And did its best to vex the lake:I listened with heart fit to break.When glided in Porphyria; straightShe shut the cold out and the storm,And kneeled and made the cheerless grateBlaze up and all the cottage warm;
— Robert Browning
Will grinned. “Some of these books are dangerous,” he said. “It’s wise to be careful.”“One must always be careful of books,” said Tessa, “and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us.”“I’m not sure a book has ever changed me,” said Will. “Well, there is one volume that promises to teach one how to turn oneself into an entire flock of sheep—”“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry,” said Tessa
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
My soul is wrapped in harsh repose,Midnight descends in raven-colored clothes,But soft... behold!A sunlight beamButting a swath of glimmering gleam.My heart expands,'tis grown a bulge in it,Inspired by your beauty...Effulgent.
— Joss Whedon
ولأنني رغم القبور..ورغم موت الأرضأرفض أن أموت
— فاروق جويدة, لأني أحبك
I sat, a solitary man,In a crowded London shop,An open book and empty cupOn the marble table-top.While on the shop and street I gazedMy body of a sudden blazed;And twenty minutes more or lessIt seemed, so great my happiness,That I was blessed and could bless.
— W.B. Yeats, The Winding Stair and Other Poems
Flutter like a hummingbird, Dive like an eagle, Ain't no bird that's my equal. - Twilight
— Kathryn Lasky, The Capture
My words are the garment of what I shall never be Like the tucked sleeve of a one-armed boy.
— W.S. Merwin, The Lice
Free verse is like free love
—  it is a contradiction in terms.
One difference between poetry and lyrics is that lyrics sort of fade into the background. They fade on the page and live on the stage when set to music.
— Stephen Sondheim
After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,And Yesterday, or Centuries before?The Feet, mechanical, go round – Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – A Wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone – This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
— Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
O words are poor receipts for what time hath stole away
— John Clare, Poems Chiefly from Manuscript
The secret of poetry is never explained - is always new. We have not got farther than mere wonder at the delicacy of the touch, & the eternity it inherits. In every house a child that in mere play utters oracles, & knows not that they are such. 'Tis as easy as breath. 'Tis like this gravity, which holds the Universe together, & none knows what it is.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Who you are contributes to your poetry in a number of important ways, but you shouldn't identify with your poems so closely that when they are cut, you're the one that bleeds.
— Dorianne Laux, The Poet's Companion: A Guide To The Pleasures Of Writing Poetry
Little CinderGirl, they can't understand you.You rise from the as-heap in a blazeand only then do they recognize you as their one true love.While you pray beneath your mother's tree you carrve a phoenix into your palmwth aa hazel twig and coal;every night she devours more of you.You used to believe in angels.Now you believe in the makeover;if you can't get the grime off your faceand your foot into a size six heelwho will ever bother to notice you?The kettle and the broom sear in your grasp,snap into fragments. The turtledoves sing,"There's blood within the shoe."You deserve the palace, you think, as you signalthe pigeons to attack, approve the barrel filled with red-hot nails.Its great hearth beckons, and the prince's flagrises crimson in the angry sun.He will love you for the heat you generate,for the flames you ignite around you,though he encase your tiny feet in glassto keep them from scorching the ground.
— Jeannine Hall Gailey, Becoming the Villainess
This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet.
— Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
This fire that we call Loving is too strong for human minds. But just right for human souls.
— Aberjhani, Elemental: The Power of Illuminated Love
Sometimes I think,I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.
— Sanober  Khan, A Thousand Flamingos
A Robin Redbreast in a CagePuts all Heaven in a Rage.A dove house fill’d with doves and pigeonsShudders Hell thro’ all its regions.A Dog starv’d at his Master’s GatePredicts the ruin of the State.A Horse misus’d upon the RoadCalls to Heaven for Human blood.Each outcry of the hunted HareA fiber from the Brain does tear.
— William Blake
Like poetry, fashion does not state anything. It merely suggests
— Karl Lagerfeld
And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.
— Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
one day, when tenderness has become the single rule of the morning,/ I will wake in your arms. perhaps your skin will be overly gorgeous./ and the light will include the impossible understanding of love.
— José Luís Peixoto, A Criança em Ruínas
I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.
— Roger Zelazny, Isle of the Dead
John Keats / John Keats / John / Please put your scarf on.
— J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
Robot BoyMr. an Mrs. Smith had a wonderful life.They were a normal, happy husband and wife.One day they got news that made Mr. Smith glad.Mrs. Smith would would be a momwhich would make him the dad!But something was wrong with their bundle of joy.It wasn't human at all,it was a robot boy!He wasn't warm and cuddlyand he didn't have skin.Instead there was a cold, thin layer of tin.There were wires and tubes sticking out of his head.He just lay there and stared,not living or dead.The only time he seemed alive at allwas with a long extension cordplugged into the wall.Mr. Smith yelled at the doctor,"What have you done to my boy?He's not flesh and blood,he's aluminum alloy!"The doctor said gently,"What I'm going to saywill sound pretty wild.But you're not the father of this strange looking child.You see, there still is some questionabout the child's gender,but we think that its fatheris a microwave blender."The Smith's lives were now filledwith misery and strife.Mrs. Smith hated her husband,and he hated his wife.He never forgave her unholy alliance:a sexual encounterwith a kitchen appliance.And Robot Boygrew to be a young man.Though he was often mistakenfor a garbage can.
— Tim Burton
I am that last, thatfinal thing, the bodyin a white sheet listening,
— Li-Young Lee
Not everything can be felt and not everything will be ever understood.
— Santosh Kalwar, Obscurity
So the nymphs they spoke,we kissed and laid.By noontime’s hourour love was made.Like braided chains of crocus stems,we lay entwined, I laid with them.Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,our bodies draping wearily,we slept, I slept so lucidly,with hopes to stay this memory.
— Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
Songwriting and poetry are so commonly birthed from underdogs because one can make even the ugliest situations admirable, or more beautiful than the beautiful situations - they are the most graceful media in which the lines of society are distorted.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
...but it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it...
— Frank O'Hara, Lunch Poems
Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades.
— Boris Pasternak
Verde que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verdes ramas. El barco sobre la mar y el caballo en la montaña.
— Federico García Lorca
I wanted the past to go away, I wantedto leave it, like another country; I wantedmy life to close, and openlike a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the songwhere it fallsdown over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;I wantedto hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,whoever I was, I wasalivefor a little while.
— Mary Oliver, Dream Work
Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.
— Santōka Taneda, Mountain Tasting: Haiku and Journals of Santoka Taneda
A precious, mouldering pleasure ’t is To meet an antique book, In just the dress his century wore; A privilege, I think.
— Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Marriage I thinkFor womenIs the best of opiates.It kills the thoughtsThat think about the thoughts,It is the best of opiates.So said Maria.But too long in solitude she'd dwelt,And too long her thoughts had feltTheir strength. So when the man drew near,Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear.Poor Maria! Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain,For now she's alone again and all in pain;She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stayTo trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day.
— Stevie Smith
The true poem rests between the words.
— Vanna Bonta, Shades Of The World
Art is long, and Time is fleeting.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Voices of the Night
This weekin live currentevents: your eyes.All power can bedangerous:Director alternating,you, socket to me.Plugged in and the gridis humming,this electricity,molecule-deep desire:particular friction, a chargestrong enough to stopa heartor start itagain; volt, re-volt--I shudder, I stutter, I startto life. I've got my ionyou, copper-top,so watch how youconduct yourself.Here's today'snewsflash: a battery of rollingblackouts in California, sudden,like lightning kisses:sudden, whitehotdarkness and you'rehere, fumbling forthat small switchwith an urgent surgestrong enough to killlesser machines.Static makes hair raise,makes things cling,makes things rise likea gathering stormcharging outsideour darkened houseand here I am:tempest, pouring outmouthfullsof tsunami on the ground,I've got that rain-soaked kite,that drenched key.You know what it's for,circuit-breaker, you knowhow to kiss until it's hertz.
— Daphne Gottlieb, Why Things Burn
True and false fears let us refrain, Let us love nobly, and live, and add again Years and years unto years, till we attain To write threescore: this is the second of our reign.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
One! two! and through and throughThe vorpal blade went snickersnack!He left it dead, and with its headHe went galumphing back.
— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
I like the posture, but not the yoga. I like the inebriated morning, but not the opium. I like the flower but not the garden, the moment but not the dream. Quiet, my love. Be still. I am sleeping.
— Roman Payne
The poet doesn't invent. He listens. 
— Jean Cocteau
I want my own will, and I wantsimply to be with my will,as it goes toward action.And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times,when something is coming near,I want to be with those who knowsecret things or else alone...I want to unfold.I don’t want to be folded anywhere,because where I am folded,there I am a lie.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
Love's mysteries in souls do grow,But yet the body is his book.
— John Donne, The Complete English Poems
A black cat among roses,phlox, lilac-misted under a quarter moon,the sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock. The garden is very still.It is dazed with moonlight,contented with perfume...
— Amy Lowell
The inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain – and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.
— Ted Hughes
You will never be alone with a poet in your pocket.
— John  Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
My silence knot is tied up in my hair; as if to keep my love out of my eyes. I cannot speak to one for whom i care. A hatpin serves as part of my disguise. In the play, my role is baticeer; a word which here means "person who trains bats." The audience may feel a prick of fear, as if sharp pins are hidden in thier hats. My co-star lives on what we call a brae. His solitude might not be just an act. A piece of mail fails to arrive one day. This poignant melodrama's based on fact.The curtain falls just as the knot unties; the silence is broken by the one who dies.
— Lemony Snicket
you will never catch up.Walk around feeling like a leafknow you could tumble at any second.Then decide what to do with your time.--The Art of Disappearing
— Naomi Shihab Nye, Salting the Ocean: 100 Poems by Young Poets
But I don't shut up and I don't die.I liveand fight, maddeningthose who rule my country.For if I liveI fight,and if I fightI contribute to the dawn.
— Otto René Castillo
Poetry is a life-cherishing force.
— Mary Oliver
One must read poetry with one's nerves.
— Wallace Stevens
We aren't suggesting that mental instability or unhappiness makes one a better poet, or a poet at all; and contrary to the romantic notion of the artist suffering for his or her work, we think these writers achieved brilliance in spite of their suffering, not because of it.
— Dorianne Laux, The Poet's Companion: A Guide To The Pleasures Of Writing Poetry
I had been hungry all the years-My noon had come, to dine-I, trembling, drew the table nearAnd touched the curious wine. 'Twas this on tables I had seenWhen turning, hungry, lone,I looked in windows, for the wealthI could not hope to own. I did not know the ample bread,'Twas so unlike the crumbThe birds and I had often sharedIn Nature's diningroom. The plenty hurt me, 'twas so new,--Myself felt ill and odd,As berry of a mountain bushTransplanted to the road. Nor was I hungry; so I foundThat hunger was a wayOf persons outside windows,The entering takes away.
— Emily Dickinson, I'm Nobody! Who Are You?
Love is like the wild rose-briar;Friendship like the holly-tree.The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,But which will bloom most constantly?The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,Its summer blossoms scent the air;Yet wait till winter comes again,And who will call the wild-briar fair?Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now,And deck thee with holly's sheen,That, when December blights thy brow,He still may leave thy garland green.
— Emily Dickinson
Every poem is a coat of arms. It must be deciphered. How much blood, how many tears in exchange for these axes, these muzzles, these unicorns, these torches, these towers, these martlets, these seedlings of stars and these fields of blue!
— Jean Cocteau
This is the city, and I am one of the citizens/Whatever interests the rest interests me
— Walt Whitman
It is sweet to think I was a companion in an expedition that never ends
— Czesław Miłosz
One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.
— Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;Conspiring with him how to load and blessWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shellsWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,And still more, later flowers for the bees,Until they think warm days will never cease,For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
— John Keats, Complete Poems and Selected Letters
You can never rouse Harris. There is no poetry about Harris- no wild yearning for the unattainable. Harris never "weeps, he knows not why." If Harris's eyes fill with tears, you can bet it is because Harris has been eating raw onions, or has put too much Worcester over his chop.If you were to stand at night by the sea-shore with Harris, and say:"Hark! do you not hear? Is it but the mermaids singing deep below the waving waters; or sad spirits, chanting dirges for white corpses held by seaweed?" Harris would take you by the arm, and say:"I know what it is, old man; you've got a chill. Now you come along with me. I know a place round the corner here, where you can get a drop of the finest Scotch whisky you ever tasted- put you right in less than no time."Harris always does know a place round the corner where you can get something brilliant in the drinking line. I believe that if you met Harris up in Paradise (supposing such a thing likely), he would immediately greet you with:"So glad you've come, old fellow; I've found a nice place round the corner here, where you can get some really first-class nectar.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
Failure: the renewable resource.
— Kay Ryan
If you can not be a poet, be the poem.
— David Carradine
Tears upon the dry sponge of heartdo not prove I am Promethean.
— Adrian C. Louis, Fire Water World: Poems
But for their cries,The herons would be lostAmidst the morning snow.
— Chiyo Ni
On I’ll pass,dragging my huge love behind me.On whatfeverish night, deliria-ridden,by what Goliaths was I begot – I, so bigand by no one needed?
— Vladimir Mayakovsky
we're lost where the mind can't find usutterly lost
— Ikkyu, Crow with No Mouth
Poetry is prose in slow motion.
— Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.
— Sylvia Plath, Ariel
What makes us leave what we love best?What is it inside us that keeps erasing itselfWhen we need it most,That sends us into uncertainty for its own sakeAnd holds us flush there until we begin to love itAnd have to begin again?What is it within our own lives we decline to liveWhenever we find it, making our days unendurable,And nights almost visionless?I still don't know yet, but I do it.
— Charles Wright, Littlefoot: A Poem
GATHERING LEAVESSpades take up leavesNo better than spoons,And bags full of leavesAre light as balloons.I make a great noiseOf rustling all dayLike rabbit and deerRunning away.But the mountains I raiseElude my embrace,Flowing over my armsAnd into my face.I may load and unloadAgain and againTill I fill the whole shed,And what have I then?Next to nothing for weight,And since they grew dullerFrom contact with earth,Next to nothing for color.Next to nothing for use.But a crop is a crop,And who's to say whereThe harvest shall stop?
— Robert Frost
If my like for you was a football crowd, you’d be deaf ’cause of the roar. And if my like for you was a boxer, there’d be a dead guy lying on the floor. And if my like for you was sugar, you’d lose your teeth before you were twenty. And if my like for you was money, let’s just say you’d be spending plenty.
— Cath Crowley, Graffiti Moon
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,To raise the genius, and to mend the heart
— Alexander Pope
Come windless invaderI am a carnival ofStars, a poem of blood.
— Sonia Sanchez
The first time I saw her,Everything in my head went quiet.
— Neil Hilborn
Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book nor from tongue. If knowledge of mysteries come after emptiness of mind, that is illumination of heart.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
All days are nights to see till I see thee, And nights bright days when dreams do show thee me.
— William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Sonnets
I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?
— Sylvia Plath
Kill what you can't savewhat you can't eat throw outwhat you can't throw out buryWhat you can't bury give awaywhat you can't give away you must carry with you,it is always heavier than you thought.
— Margaret Atwood, You are Happy
Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….
— Sappho
No duties. I don’t have to be profound.I don’t have to be artistically perfect.Or sublime. Or edifying.I just wander. I say: ‘You were running,That’s fine. It was the thing to do.’And now the music of the worlds transforms me.My planet enters a different house.Trees and lawns become more distinct.Philosophies one after another go out.Everything is lighter yet not less odd.Sauces, wine vintages, dishes of meat.We talk a little of district fairs,Of travels in a covered wagon with a cloud of dust behind,Of how rivers once were, what the scent of calamus is.That’s better than examining one’s private dreams.And meanwhile it has arrived. It’s here, invisible.Who can guess how it got here, everywhere.Let others take care of it. Time for me to play hooky.Buena notte. Ciao. Farewell.
— Czesław Miłosz
Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.
— Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam
i don't want to hate the presidenti don't want to go to harvardi don't want to win the pulitzer prizei just want to sit in my bathtuband think about relationships i will never havewith people i will never meetand then go lay in my bedwith a magnifying glassand count all the stiches in my sheetsuntil i fall asleepand wake upto repeat again.
— Ellen Kennedy
at first when the rain fell from the sky so wide and deepit smelled like sage, my favorite smellI went up on the plateau to watch it cometo see the gifts it always broughtbut this rain changed from blue to black and leftnothing.
— Ally Condie, Matched
We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
I went to the Garden of Love, And saw what I never had seen: A Chapel was built in the midst, Where I used to play on the green. And the gates of this Chapel were shut, And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door; So I turn'd to the Garden of Love, That so many sweet flowers bore. And I saw it was filled with graves, And tomb-stones where flowers should be: And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds, And binding with briars, my joys & desires.
— William Blake, Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Lines Written In Early SpringI heard a thousand blended notes,While in a grove I sate reclined,In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughtsBring sad thoughts to the mind.To her fair works did Nature linkThe human soul that through me ran;And much it grieved my heart to thinkWhat man has made of man.Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;And 'tis my faith that every flowerEnjoys the air it breathes.The birds around me hopped and played,Their thoughts I cannot measure:--But the least motion which they madeIt seemed a thrill of pleasure.The budding twigs spread out their fan,To catch the breezy air;And I must think, do all I can,That there was pleasure there.If this belief from heaven be sent,If such be Nature's holy plan,Have I not reason to lamentWhat man has made of man?
— William Wordsworth
You have to imaginea waiting that is not impatientbecause it is timeless.
— R.S. Thomas, The Echoes Return Slow
A pine tree standeth lonelyIn the North on an upland bare;It standeth whitely shroudedWith snow, and sleepeth there.It dreameth of a Palm treeWhich far in the East alone,In the mournful silence standethOn its ridge of burning stone.
— Heinrich Heine
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.
— Tom Schulman, Dead Poets Society
Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies.
— Frank O'Hara
I am not a finished poem, and I am not the song you’ve turned me into. I am a detached human being, making my way in a world that is constantly trying to push me aside, and you who send me letters and emails and beautiful gifts wouldn’t even recognise me if you saw me walking down the street where I live tomorrowfor I am not a poem. I am tired and worn out and the eyes you would see would not be painted or inspiredbut empty and weary from drinking too much at all timesand I am not the life of your party who sings and has glorious words to speakfor I don’t speak muchat alland my voice is raspy and unsteady from unhealthy living and not much sleep and I only use it when I sing and I always sing too muchor not at alland never when people are around because they expect poems and symphonies and I am nota poembut an elegyat my bestbut unedited and uncut and not a lot of people want to work with me because there’s only so much you can do with an audio take, with the plug-ins and EQs and I was born distorted, disordered, and I’m pretty fine with that,but others are not.
— Charlotte Eriksson, Another Vagabond Lost To Love: Berlin Stories on Leaving & Arriving
You just go on your nerve.
— Frank O'Hara
Amor é um fogo que arde sem se ver, é ferida que dói, e não se sente; é um contentamento descontente, é dor que desatina sem doer.É um não querer mais que bem querer; é um andar solitário entre a gente; é nunca contentar se de contente; é um cuidar que ganha em se perder.É querer estar preso por vontade; é servir a quem vence, o vencedor; é ter com quem nos mata, lealdade.Mas como causar pode seu favor nos corações humanos amizade, se tão contrário a si é o mesmo Amor?
— Luís de Camões, Sonetos de Camões
I am a free soul, singing my heart out by myself no matter where I go and I call strangers my friends because I learn things and find ways to fit them into my own world. I hear what people say, rearrange it, take away and tear apart until it finds value in my reality and there I make it work. I find spaces in between the cracks and cuts where it feels empty and there I make it work.
— Charlotte Eriksson
She dealt her pretty words like Blades --How glittering they shone --And every One unbared a NerveOr wantoned with a Bone --She never deemed -- she hurt --That -- is not Steel's Affair --A vulgar grimace in the Flesh --How ill the Creatures bear --To Ache is human -- not polite --The Film upon the eyeMortality's old Custom --Just locking up -- to Die.
— Emily Dickinson
Why love what you will lose?There is nothing else to love.
— Louise Glück, Triumph of Achilles
There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.
— Joy Harjo
and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim uswhich will we claimhow will we go on livinghow will we touch, what will we knowwhat will we say to each other.
— Adrienne Rich
it was the kind of moonthat I would want to send back to my ancestorsand gift to my descendantsso they know that I too,have been bruised...by beauty.
— Sanober  Khan, Turquoise Silence
Well, now,if little by little you stop loving meI shall stop loving you little by little.If suddenlyyou forget medo not look for me,for I shall already have forgotten you.
— Pable Neruda
The ambitions are wake up, breathe, keep breathing.
— Nicole Blackman, Blood Sugar
Mineral cactai,quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls,the bird that punctures space,thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind.The pines taught me to talk to myself.In that garden I learnedto send myself off.Later there were no gardens. 
— Octavio Paz, A Draft of Shadows and Other Poems
Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly
— Mary Howitt, The Spider and the Fly
Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves.
— T.S. Eliot
A FEATHER.A feather is trimmed, it is trimmed by the light and the bug and the post, it is trimmed by little leaning and by all sorts of mounted reserves and loud volumes. It is surely cohesive.
— Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons
The Soul selects her own Society—Then—shuts the Door—To her divine Majority—Present no more—Unmoved—she notes the Chariots—pausing—At her low Gate—Unmoved—an Emperor be kneelingUpon her Mat—I've known her—from an ample nation—Choose One—Then—close the Valves of her attention—Like Stone—
— Emily Dickinson, Selected Poems
I am too full of lifeto be half-loved.
— Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada
Into my heart an air that killsFrom yon far country blows:What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?That is the land of lost content,I see it shining plain,The happy highways where I wentAnd cannot come again.
— A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad
You are her mother.Why did you not warn her,hold her like a rotting boatand tell her that men will not love herif she is covered in continents,if her teeth are small colonies,if her stomach is an islandif her thighs are borders?What man wants to lie downand watch the world burnin his bedroom?Your daughter ’s face is a small riot,her hands are a civil war,a refugee camp behind each ear,a body littered with ugly things.But God,doesn’t she wearthe world well?
— Warsan Shire, Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth